Greed

[GreatWyrm of Babylon]

How come it is inevitable that the irrational man will accuse the rationl man of being greedy? Does the irrational man equate ratonality with greed? Why?

Yes, I believe that man always acts in his best interest, but exactly who's self interest should he act in, and why would that make him greedy?

As long as a man produces more than he uses, nobody has the right to call him greedy. The man that invents a process that adds 1% production to the workforce could not spend the money he has saved everyone in two lifetimes, so why is he considered greedy if he gets rich off of it? This is not rationality, it is being irrationaly angry that he did what you did not. What i it you want when you treat the man like a criminal? A handout maybe?

The socialists here likely believe a man shoud be paid by effort, not result. If that is true, it should be the idiot that makes the processharder that would be rewarded, since he would increase the effort required for all work...

[RebelWithanAK]

Greatwyrm, a man is not an island. I can be the most brilliant man on Earth and I'm not going to be able to so much as go to work without the system working to my benefit. Hence, it is to my benefit to make sure the system works.

I live in an apartment and take the train to work. I have farmers and their government agents, truckers and their managers, retail clerks and their hired help, city planners and civil engineers, architects, construction workers and their bosses, supervisors and union representatives, superintendants, transit officials, train operators and track workers to thank for my continued existence. I have doctors, nurses, aides, insurance agents and their administrators, environmental agents and parks officials, parks police, parks attendants, janitors, garbage men and their agents, EMS experts and yet more truck drivers to thank for my life expectancy. I have entire cities of people very much like myself to thank for the success of my place of work, and its administrators, managers, technical workers, and all those in related industries - down to couriers, lunch counter attendants, livery drivers and all related business support personnel (hence the entire reason for the crowdedness of the city) for my continued employment, and I have no desire to see any of this destroyed anytime soon because it ultimately hurts me.

Is this irrational? Methinks you've got it backwards.

[Geoff332]

If you really want to pursue this, let's try and get things a little more organised -- so we can actually debate things.

1. Define rationality.
2. Define self interest (who's self-interest is a fairly null term: unless you are proposing that one has multiple selves, there is only one self-interest).
3. "What i it you want when you treat the man like a criminal?" Who treats who like a criminal?
4. Which socialists where? A general accusation is rather meaningless. Where was this claim made, by whom and in what context?

[GreatWyrm of Babylon]

You assume you know where I am coming from but you show absolutely no evidence that you have any idea. You also assume that I am the one not getting it even though it is you that are missing the point. What makes you so arrogant to assume that I am thinking what you think I am thinking? Your mind must be awful great to encompass both our worlds with complete understanding!

I have no wish to destroy society, nor do I believe my veiwpoint endangers it. You are simply fearing the concept because it is different. Therefore casting great doubt on the assumption that your mind is broad enough to encompass us both.

All I am doing is calling the motivations by their true names...

[RebelWithanAK]

The means of production is dreary, monotonous and backbreaking, not to mention that its inception is merely a new form of wage slavery; housing is expensive, in poor supply and poorly maintained. The physical character of our civilization has been torn up by the way we've been doing things for the last century and a half, as shown by our almost abject lack of cultural institutions in most of the country, and capitalism itself is most certainly not anywhere near a real meritocracy. The extravagant wealth of the extremely rich is frightening in its power; in its ability to shape the character for most of society and its complete lack of accountability in doing so. Robert Moses, for example, just about single-handedly evicted a quarter of a million people from their homes, and all but destroyed the character of an entire city borough. Walmart employs .3% of the country and can effectively dictate the power of labor unions nationwide.

Greed is a powerful tool, and incredibly destructive.

[GreatWyrm of Babylon]

Geoff
Rationalty: following a methodology that manipulate hard data rather than undefinable terms.

Self-interest: I am not the one that keeps insisting that another concept is possible, I do not understand what the hel they mean, ask them.

??Who said I was treated like a criminal, maybe you should read it again???

It is not a general accusation, we ave at least one self-proclaimed socialist here. His name is G Adams, maybe you have heard of him?

[Geoff332]

1. But rationality, as you've defined it, isn't hard data. I've asked before, I'll ask again: doesn't this make rationality irrational?

2. You used the term ("I believe that man always acts in his best interest"), what does it mean to you?

3. Your statement was: "What i it you want when you treat the man like a criminal?" My question was, "Who treats who like a criminal?" I've read what you wrote, and the question stands.

4. Where did G. Adams make the claim that "a man shoud be paid by effort"? Or from what did you infer that such a claim was implied?

[GreatWyrm of Babylon]

Originally posted by RebelWithanAK@09-22-2003 12:35 AM The means of production is dreary, monotonous and backbreaking, not to mention that its inception is merely a new form of wage slavery; housing is expensive, in poor supply and poorly maintained. The physical character of our civilization has been torn up by the way we've been doing things for the last century and a half, as shown by our almost abject lack of cultural institutions in most of the country, and capitalism itself is most certainly not anywhere near a real meritocracy. The extravagant wealth of the extremely rich is frightening in its power; in its ability to shape the character for most of society and its complete lack of accountability in doing so. Robert Moses, for example, just about single-handedly evicted a quarter of a million people from their homes, and all but destroyed the character of an entire city borough. Walmart employs .3% of the country and can effectively dictate the power of labor unions nationwide. Greed is a powerful tool, and incredibly destructive.

The means of production are deary and monotonous, but hardly backbreaking, I think you are thinking of pre-industrail times when a man would die young plowing a field full of rocks.

Housing is expensive because we have to pay a panel of 'experts' to decide if it is safe enough to live in, and other stupid items forced on us by government to keep lawyers employied, not industrialists.

That power you speak of is because it has become a habit to pay state officials to get relief, so why do you blame the bribe givers but not the takers? The takers are the ones that build that part of the system.


Please define greed and what it has to do with your statement rather than your opinion...

[GreatWyrm of Babylon]

Geoff
Both of us are intelligent enough to prove there is no such thing as hard data, so what is your point.

What I want to know is, why is it mandatory for me to explain a philosophy that has taken me my whole life to get this far, and why you consider it proof that I am wrong when I cannot.

Of course, you do not have to lay any groundwork for yours because you were raised in it and do not even see the flimsy structures that support it. But I am expected to pretend it is solid?

You are standing in a sinking rowboat, while attacking my foundation, what about yours?

Damn my lab partner that knocked my PC off the net, typing on this laptop is driving me nuts...

[RebelWithanAK]

Excuse me? Have you worked in a factory lately? Where owners with their dark, reinforced-concrete shells cut every corner imaginable in safety and wage laws because they know cheap labor is always plentiful and equally dispoable? Have you tried to live on minimum wage in a railroad flat or a dumbell tenement or government project that's being squeezed by absentee landlords who are living in some countryside whose water table is used up and whose tree cover from landslides are gone because quick-money tract housing developers on government subsidies showed how to extend beyond zoning laws; houses that, while under a code of safety (one that allows federal backing on mortgage payments, which doesn't happen in most city neighborhoods - it's called redlining), have down payments and "slow-growth" movements to ensure themselves unreachable by the working poor - not to mention the added costs of maintaining a car? Have you noticed how at risk you are from economic forces beyond your control - how the "international" bottom-rate architecture and the federally-subsidized highway system allow businesses to leave your locale as easily as the tax-paying rich? How companies like Walmart and Verizon can flout labor laws because an oil-backed government's tax-break recession leaves hordes of scab workers to ensure a complete and abject lack of job security and livable wages? Do you know that the hourly-wage labor pool can be referred to 'independent contractors' and thus be exempt from minimum wage laws and health insurance, itself a racket from unregulated drug firms charging "what the market will bear"? Greed is self-evident. Why can't you see it?

[RebelWithanAK]

Originally posted by GreatWyrm of Babylon@09-22-2003 01:00 AM What I want to know is, why is it mandatory for me to explain a philosophy that has taken me my whole life to get this far, and why you consider it proof that I am wrong when I cannot. ... You are standing in a sinking rowboat, while attacking my foundation, what about yours?

"I don't have to back up my arguments; you do."

[Geoff332]

Both of us are intelligent enough to prove there is no such thing as hard data

Then, once again, by your own definition, there is no such thing as rationality -- since it is "a methodology that manipulate hard data".

What I want is to get past the rhetoric and get to what these words that people throw around so blithely actually mean. First of all to them, secondly to the broader audience.

My position is not relevant here -- you're the one who took a stand and made some claims. I'm trying to work out what you actually mean by those claims and if they make sense. This is an issue for internal consistency, not for comparative evaluation. If you say 2+2=13, the accuracy of your claim doesn't depend on whether I think "2+2=4" or "2+2=-5".

[RebelWithanAK]

Originally posted by GreatWyrm of Babylon@09-22-2003 12:42 AM Rationalty: following a methodology that manipulate hard data rather than undefinable terms.

The terms are easily definable, and besides, you've just talked yourself into a corner. Where's the hard data on your end?

[GreatWyrm of Babylon]

Actually, I have not talked myself into any corner. Because it does not matter if the information we recieve through our senses is imaginary or not, it is the only data we have to act on. So, while it is only 'hard data' as a relative term it will have to do since their is absolutely no other choice.

Have we now gone down to basics enough for us to have a common foundation to build from? Or do we need to drop back to "I think therefore I am"?

[Geoff332]

No, I want you to answer my question. By your own definitions, it appears that rationality is irrational.

Is that statement a correct description of your position? If it is not, explain how I have mis-understood your definitions. Until you do this, I have no idea what you mean by 'rational' and 'irrational', because the meanings seem to shift quite frequently.

[RebelWithanAK]

Originally posted by GreatWyrm of Babylon@09-22-2003 10:35 PM Actually, I have not talked myself into any corner. Because it does not matter if the information we recieve through our senses is imaginary or not, it is the only data we have to act on. So, while it is only 'hard data' as a relative term it will have to do since their is absolutely no other choice.

Err,

1) You started this as rant against the illogic of liberals and socialists... (making a profit isn't greed... socialists pay by effort, not progress...)

2) Then you go and define away half your terms... (rationalists use hard facts, but there ARE no hard facts - what's more, you don't have to go and explain your world philosophy to the rest of us; the poor don't have it so bad anyway, and technology has fixed most of the problems of capitalism - not that's not to say that rationalists don't want reform...)

3) And now you rant at us for, well, accepting life as it is and defining it as what we want it to be, while you conservatives are "really" the ones objectively looking for reform, when it's plain to see that it was the liberals and socialists who were looking for reform and the conservatives who were looking to keep the status quo as it stands.

I seriously have a hard time following the leaps of logic in each of your posts, and the fact of the matter is not helped by the fact that your posts have little or no relation to each other. Why don't you, instead of writing out a bunch of nonsensical rhetoric and then asking us to back up our claims against it, start out by writing out the backdrop to this philosophy of yours so we can get off on the right foot: Which means, of course...

What encompasses self-interest, as compared to greed;
Is it feasible to accept the indication that liberals are progressive and conservatives are, well conservative;
Is the system of capitalism flawed, and why;
As such, who is at fault for justifying (or attacking) the system, reformers or conservatives?

[GreatWyrm of Babylon]

#2 Saying there were no hard facts was sarcasm, I was picking on destructive critic's...
#3 You still do not get the fact that I define things in at least three dimensions and it includes a "delta time" I take it you lack the math...?

[GreatWyrm of Babylon]

Geoff
Listen, I do not worship Geoff, either state a position of your own for me to nit-pick or get off my ass. Being a sniper requires no debate skill and that is all you seem capable of. I do not have an opinion of you as high as you obviously do.

[Geoff332]

My position?

How about this. I don't know the answers.

However, as far as I can see, you are struggling to work out what you own question means. Given that the core concepts you introduced (greed, rational/irrational, self-interest) are not defined and your efforts to define them have produced contradictions and logical inconsistencies, I think this is a safe conclusion.

[GreatWyrm of Babylon]

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points
out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds
could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who
is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and
sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes
up short again and again, because there is no effort
without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great
enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a
worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the
triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he
fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his
place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who
knew neither victory nor defeat."

Teddy Roosevelt