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Golbez posted:I have a friend who says he would rather pay more money for private health care than any public option because it's morally wrong to force him to pay for someone else. They aren't his concern.
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 02:28 |
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# ? Apr 28, 2024 08:59 |
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Accretionist posted:What's he say about paying for highways or fire departments? Or that he'd have nothing without them paying for his stuff? The only difference between they and he is his conceit. They're in the same boat. I tried this very argument; some people need more military or police or fire protection than others. Of course, then he mentioned that he wouldn't mind private police. Health care is civil infrastructure, just like police and fire and military and courts. Some people need more than others; some people never will; but we all benefit from the blanket level of protection.
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 16:10 |
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[snip]
Morton Haynice fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Mar 4, 2013 |
# ? Jan 30, 2013 18:36 |
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Removed at Morton Haynice's request. User-Friendly fucked around with this message at 02:52 on Mar 5, 2013 |
# ? Jan 30, 2013 18:43 |
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I'm trying to show that consent to a particular activity does not entail consent to all possible outcomes of that particular activity. The objection I'm getting is pretty much, "yea, it is, they shouldn't have done -x-, so that -y- wouldn't have happened." I'm obviously not getting through to them, is there a resource I can read up on to try and structure my reasoning more clearly and persuasively? I've checked the Stanford Encyclopedia but can't find a salient article that addresses that point directly.
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# ? Jan 31, 2013 00:28 |
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gaan kak posted:I'm trying to show that consent to a particular activity does not entail consent to all possible outcomes of that particular activity. The objection I'm getting is pretty much, "yea, it is, they shouldn't have done -x-, so that -y- wouldn't have happened." I'm obviously not getting through to them, is there a resource I can read up on to try and structure my reasoning more clearly and persuasively? I've checked the Stanford Encyclopedia but can't find a salient article that addresses that point directly. Is it like, "if they didn't want to die in an earthquake, they shouldn't have moved to California"? If so, I'm not sure that there's a name for it. You should be able to take it apart pretty easily through examples that depart from the specifics of whatever your friend is hung up on. Usually, though, there's no reaching people once they've declined to think through your refutation because they didn't reason themselves into the position they've occupied. Your friend likely adopted his position because of moral psychology (is it basically sluts profane their god-given, divine body with alcohol and so deserve the consequence of getting raped"? Or "poors deserve bad jobs because they lack the virtue to work hard enough to do better"?) and will now defend it reflexively because to him refutation feels like a personal attack. To admit error would be to compromise himself. You can only reason somebody out of a position they reasoned themselves into.
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# ? Jan 31, 2013 00:48 |
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User-Friendly posted:Ask him to show news coverage for every single time a straight man raped and murdered a woman. e: Removed Shame Boy fucked around with this message at 00:04 on Mar 5, 2013 |
# ? Jan 31, 2013 01:45 |
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gaan kak posted:I'm trying to show that consent to a particular activity does not entail consent to all possible outcomes of that particular activity. The objection I'm getting is pretty much, "yea, it is, they shouldn't have done -x-, so that -y- wouldn't have happened." I'm obviously not getting through to them, is there a resource I can read up on to try and structure my reasoning more clearly and persuasively? I've checked the Stanford Encyclopedia but can't find a salient article that addresses that point directly. It is a classic problem with consequentialism - a school of ethics which states that consequences should be the ultimate basis for judging the morality of actions. As it applies to this particular case, the problem is this: It is impossible to know what all the outcomes of a particular decision will be, and so it is impossible to consent to all possible outcomes of that particular decision. Real observers do not possess such knowledge, so you could call it the "real observer problem" if you wish. As opposed to ideal observers.
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# ? Jan 31, 2013 01:57 |
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gaan kak posted:I'm trying to show that consent to a particular activity does not entail consent to all possible outcomes of that particular activity. The objection I'm getting is pretty much, "yea, it is, they shouldn't have done -x-, so that -y- wouldn't have happened." I'm obviously not getting through to them, is there a resource I can read up on to try and structure my reasoning more clearly and persuasively? I've checked the Stanford Encyclopedia but can't find a salient article that addresses that point directly.
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# ? Jan 31, 2013 02:18 |
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We are specifically speaking about pregnancy and consent to sex, but they are also of the belief that those living in seismic zones in California or storm zones along the Gulf Coast should be S.O.L. if they are without private insurance. I feel like this might be an unproductive discussion with these people, but I appreciate everyone's help.twodot posted:I should note, that I think it's likely that this line of conversation will lead to you just saying "gently caress you, you are a bad person." Yea, it's certainly getting there.
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# ? Jan 31, 2013 02:40 |
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There are many factors that play a role in where one lives, and no region in the world is free of natural disasters. The frequency of their occurrence is inconsequential, from the sounds of it. You could follow this logic to its inevitable conclusion and argue that we consent to anything bad that happens to us as a result of forces without moral agency no matter where we live. Let's get to the heart of the matter though: Denying empathy due to consent is completely pointless. It achieves nothing and you gain nothing. No matter what ethics he wraps his opinion on, he is simply being an rear end in a top hat.
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# ? Jan 31, 2013 03:20 |
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I've had this scenario occur to me a few times, with a few variations...Someone who doesn't like Taxes... posted:Why should I have to pay for someone's welfare? Or healthcare? Or the roads I don't use? It's my goddamn hard earned money! This is pretty common among many people and this kind of phrase can me lighter or harsher but I've always had some kind of difficulty with formulating a decent default-response. I've formulated this response. quote:The taxes you pay are payment for services the government has and is providing to you. While you may not use them their presence is indirectly and enormously beneficial to you. While welfare may not benefit you it's existence provides piece of mind and is there to serve as insurance during tough times. Just how there is insurance in the private market place the same exists for the public. This also protects the economy as what effects individuals directly effects the entire economy. Thoughts?
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# ? Jan 31, 2013 03:23 |
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Instead of welfare (or only welfare) you might want to mention public utilities like water, electricity, roads, police, firemen, and teachers. He seems incredulous about paying for roads he doesn't use, but I can guarantee something or someone that benefits him has used those services. Raw materials come from everywhere, employees need basic education to become a successful workforce, everyone benefits from safe water and safe homes... it's the cost of living in a society, of civilization. By everyone contributing those resources are much more efficiently deployed in the manner that benefits everyone the most. Economies of scale don't disappear just because the government is the one doing it. For welfare specifically, it's the cost of not having starving, desperate people breaking into anyplace they can (showing a little initiative, eh? good ol' bootstraps) just so they can survive and dragging their families and everyone else down with them. However, if he's especially morally repugnant and talks about free market or some bullshit, ask him to consider whether welfare might just be the market-derived optimal solution? How much would it cost for everyone to get security guards, upgrade the security with their house, and the lawsuits from hurting or killing those desperate people? Surely giving them some food is a much better and cheaper alternative, born out by estimates by Moody's where every dollar spent on food stamps returned $1.50 to the economy.
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# ? Jan 31, 2013 03:54 |
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Tab8715 posted:Thoughts? Peace of mind, affects As for the content, "social contracts" are basically just fairy tales. Bourgeois states might be more or less nice in how they operate, but the capitalist class always has more political power in the aggregate than the rest of the populace, so the social programmes the state enacts are going to primarily be there to subvert radicalism (class collaboration/corporatism) and maintain capitalism in various ways (enforcement of property, formalisation of Adam Smith's "conspiracy against the public", infrastructure, protection from capitalists in other states with subsidies, protection from other states with armies). The make-up of an individual state in terms of social programmes and public institutions is a function of how hard various forces (eg anti-capitalists) have pushed against the ruling class, how hard the ruling class pushed back, the foreign threats the ruling class face, the interests of the important industries. Nevertheless a fairy tale might be an easier sell for a right-winger than a class based explanation.
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# ? Jan 31, 2013 04:00 |
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DarkHorse posted:Instead of welfare (or only welfare) you might want to mention public utilities like water, electricity, roads, police, firemen, and teachers. He seems incredulous about paying for roads he doesn't use, but I can guarantee something or someone that benefits him has used those services. I'd suspecting the knee-jerk reaction would simply be something such as - if the I don't use those roads and despite me benefiting from them those whom use them should foot the bill. Enjoy posted:Peace of mind, affects Uh... What?
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# ? Jan 31, 2013 04:24 |
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Tab8715 posted:I'd suspecting the knee-jerk reaction would simply be something such as - if the I don't use those roads and despite me benefiting from them those whom use them should foot the bill. As an aside, you should have used "who" in that particular case. As a rule of thumb you only use "whom" when you'd use "him" or "her" when answering the (implied) question; "To whom should I give this letter?" "Give it to him," vs. "Who uses these roads?" "He does." I could give you a more precise answer of their distinctions, but that would require an even bigger derail detailing parts of speech and object/subject cases. It's just about always safe to use "who" though, as "whom" is rapidly falling out of circulation (and hence much of the confusion about its use).
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# ? Jan 31, 2013 05:50 |
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My grammar was terrible, sorry about that Another person I know brought up that minority rights don't exist only human rights. I'm suspecting that he means the government should allow businesses to discriminate based on race, sex, etc and that the "free market" would eventually correct this imbalance. Am I on the right train of thought here? I think this is the same reasoning behind Ron Paul's books where he says that while it's morally despicable for an employer to sexual harass an employee it's just as wrong for the victim to ask the government to step in is wrong.
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# ? Jan 31, 2013 20:30 |
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He is right, minority rights don't exist. Civil rights do.
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# ? Jan 31, 2013 22:14 |
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Tab8715 posted:I've always had some kind of difficulty with formulating a decent default-response. I've stopped listing benefits of public expenditure because one gets bogged down in 'I didn't ask for that!' and 'I should be able to opt out!' and so on. Nowadays I just go straight in with "It's not your money. Is that your face on the notes? Taxation is the price you pay for the system that lets you get the money in the first place." They never want to opt out of money.
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# ? Jan 31, 2013 22:27 |
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Oh dear me posted:I've stopped listing benefits of public expenditure because one gets bogged down in 'I didn't ask for that!' and 'I should be able to opt out!' and so on. Nowadays I just go straight in with "It's not your money. Is that your face on the notes? Taxation is the price you pay for the system that lets you get the money in the first place." They never want to opt out of money. I have honestly had someone come back at this argument with fuckmothering bitcoins before. I just stopped talking to them after that.
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# ? Feb 1, 2013 00:35 |
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Oh dear me posted:I've stopped listing benefits of public expenditure because one gets bogged down in 'I didn't ask for that!' and 'I should be able to opt out!' and so on. Nowadays I just go straight in with "It's not your money. Is that your face on the notes? Taxation is the price you pay for the system that lets you get the money in the first place." They never want to opt out of money. I see this is why lolbertarians love their coins and gold standard.
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# ? Feb 1, 2013 00:50 |
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Does anyone have some resources on Bitcoins? I have a couple of anarcho-libertarian friends that keep flooding my facebook with German Pirate Party articles about how it's a great idea to invest your pension in them
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# ? Feb 1, 2013 05:57 |
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SSJ2 Goku Wilders posted:Does anyone have some resources on Bitcoins? I have a couple of anarcho-libertarian friends that keep flooding my facebook with German Pirate Party articles about how it's a great idea to invest your pension in them I would say any text that describes how fiat currency works would be just fine - specifically inflation control. There was a fantastic (but lengthy) blog post explaining it for the (more or less) layman - not really about bitcoins, just about money in general. I've had no luck digging it out my various browser/bookmark histories though. As far as I can tell bitcoins aren't the worst idea ever, they are just inferior to government backed, purposefully inflation controlled currencies in every way. (except for illegal things of course, for which they are great, at the cost of instability) Well that and transaction costs, but that problem is quite solvable for traditional currency as well. For example. Of course since your friends are anarcho-libertarians they would simply argue that these drawbacks, if they acknowledge they exist at all (bitcoins' crazy inflation control mechanism does approximate the behavior of actual central banks... well, in as much as an 8 year old playing doctor approximates a surgeon...) are worth the benefit of throwing off the oppressive yoke of government. And I mean, they're not wrong if you start from their premises. If you're not gonna have a government, you could do worse then bitcoins.
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# ? Feb 1, 2013 06:12 |
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SSJ2 Goku Wilders posted:Does anyone have some resources on Bitcoins? I have a couple of anarcho-libertarian friends that keep flooding my facebook with German Pirate Party articles about how it's a great idea to invest your pension in them Oh dear man. The short answer is just don't do it. The long answer is to go to http://buttcoin.org/ and read some of the articles about bitcoins and the bitcoin community as a whole. Investing in them is a fool's game. Here's the value of bitcoin in USD over the past couple of years: Notice the sharp spikes and corresponding sudden declines? We are currently approaching the peak of an upswing right now, this is about the worst possible time to invest in it. It's also quite a bit of a hassle to get real money into and out of bitcoins. You end up either having to deal with several intermediaries between you and a bitcoin exchange, or paying a premium to buy "over the counter" in IRC channels.
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# ? Feb 1, 2013 06:15 |
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SSJ2 Goku Wilders posted:Does anyone have some resources on Bitcoins? I have a couple of anarcho-libertarian friends that keep flooding my facebook with German Pirate Party articles about how it's a great idea to invest your pension in them Bitcoins are an ongoing trainwreck that's so consistent it can support a GBS thread. The most obvious problem with them, not counting "the userbase" is that the value can fluctuate 50% in a month or two. Go ahead, throw your pension in.
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# ? Feb 1, 2013 06:16 |
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I had seen the Bitcoin thread when it was still inchoate, but it exploded so fast that I couldn't really catch up with it anymore. Reading through 300 pages of posts just to riposte a few lunatics' crazyposting would've been a stupid way to spend time. But the Bitcoin meme is getting more traction, or it seems that way from my experience, so it helps to recognize the bs. Are there any good, authoritative posts in that GBS thread that someone has the link handy to? What about articles on buttcoin.org? A lot of the website seems to be in-jokes for people whom already understand why the thing is laughable. Thanks for the replies. e: Just for the record, while they definitely did suggest putting my pension in them, I know enough about the things to know that this is a terrible idea SSJ2 Goku Wilders fucked around with this message at 06:45 on Feb 1, 2013 |
# ? Feb 1, 2013 06:42 |
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The core of the problem with investing in bitcoin is actually explained in technical papers issued by the creators and lead programmers of the Bitcoin system. It is designed to be a proof of concept for how a crypto-currency can work, and not intended to really be used as an investment, a day to day currency system, or anything like that. The expectation of the people who actually created and founded the project is to show that such a thing is possible, but not be the final product which can be used. Honestly it's a clever bit of programming, and a great proof of concept. But it's not able to sustain itself as anything other than an intermediary for certain kinds of transactions that are tricky to do with normal currencies. I suspect your friends just want to wither profit off you by selling you them, or are interested in buying some drugs online. They're probably not gonna be dissauded by anything you have to say, and they're gonna have to get burned by it themselves to wise up.
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# ? Feb 1, 2013 06:57 |
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Speaking of currency, I once read a list of 'dangerous ideas' about 8 years ago that mentioned "complimentary currency". Basically saying, for trade with the outside world, a city or region wants to use a currency in wider circulation that is scarce by nature. But for trade and development within the community, you want a local currency that is abundant by nature. This dichotomy was supposedly how many of the cathedrals in Europe were funded, for example. Unfortunately I've been unable to find this article again so I can't review it and confirm what it was talking about. Does that make sense, to have a local abundant currency vs an external (though can still be the same country) scarce currency? The Wikipedia article on complimentary currency doesn't go into the differences in how the currencies are managed, just that they exist.
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# ? Feb 1, 2013 16:15 |
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From what I've been told bitcoins have found a certain amount of popular amongst certain international criminal elements. Golbez posted:Speaking of currency, I once read a list of 'dangerous ideas' about 8 years ago that mentioned "complimentary currency". Basically saying, for trade with the outside world, a city or region wants to use a currency in wider circulation that is scarce by nature. But for trade and development within the community, you want a local currency that is abundant by nature. This dichotomy was supposedly how many of the cathedrals in Europe were funded, for example. Unfortunately I've been unable to find this article again so I can't review it and confirm what it was talking about. Does that make sense, to have a local abundant currency vs an external (though can still be the same country) scarce currency? The Wikipedia article on complimentary currency doesn't go into the differences in how the currencies are managed, just that they exist. They have a dual currency in Cuba I believe, one kind of money for tourists and another kind for locals. I don't know how the currency works for international trade though, just that they've literally split the money between locals and foreignness.
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# ? Feb 1, 2013 17:09 |
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Morton Haynice posted:A guy complaining about pro-gay bias in the media just brought up the case of William Smithson, a gay man who raped and murdered 23-year-old Jason Shephard in 2009. News is a money making industry. The news stations probably just didn't think it would make money. There's a lot of people killed every year, not everybody gets a 24 hour news cycle about them.
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# ? Feb 1, 2013 17:26 |
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Golbez posted:Does that make sense, to have a local abundant currency vs an external (though can still be the same country) scarce currency? The Wikipedia article on complimentary currency doesn't go into the differences in how the currencies are managed, just that they exist. You could consider precious metal standard currencies to function like that. In day to day use while silver or gold backed money was in use, you'd of course just get paper currency or base metal coinage and those are not scarce. However for international transactions, they'd sometimes be denominated or even actually delivered on the basis of specific amounts of silver/gold/whatever. Of course, especially in the middle ages, it would be common for there to be very little cash or coins in actual use among the public. A lot of day to day transactions would involve payment in kind or essentially running up a tab. For that you could consider what people had and did to be the "local abundant currency" while actual money was the scarce currency for external transactions. Helsing posted:From what I've been told bitcoins have found a certain amount of popular amongst certain international criminal elements. True international criminals prefer to stick to mature real currency money laundering. The international criminal elements using bitcoin are like, a guy in France who sells 10 grams of cocaine to a dude in the US. The amount of value available and liquid in the bitcoin system is not nearly enough for the use of large scale criminal operations.
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# ? Feb 1, 2013 18:36 |
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Install Gentoo posted:True international criminals prefer to stick to mature real currency money laundering. The international criminal elements using bitcoin are like, a guy in France who sells 10 grams of cocaine to a dude in the US. Well there's also criminals in the bitcoin community itself, who take a bunch of untraceable internet fun money from nerds and run away with it (since it's pretty drat easy to launder stolen money using the system). There's also the criminally stupid, like the guy who restarted his amazon cloud instance and literally deleted a whole pile of internet fun money belonging to other people. But you should really read the bitcoin thread (or buttcoin) for those stories. So what I'm saying is, you should invest your pension in cosbycoins instead. They can only go zip zop zoobity bop.
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# ? Feb 2, 2013 01:07 |
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One of the friends I was talking about used to be in local punk antifa groups and was somewhat of a socialist, he ended up linking me to mises.org and started dropping Ron Paul talking points on me in attempts to salvage his precious coin. What a waste. Thanks for the replies, I'll read the GBS thread over the weekend.
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# ? Feb 2, 2013 01:16 |
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SSJ2 Goku Wilders posted:Does anyone have some resources on Bitcoins? I have a couple of anarcho-libertarian friends that keep flooding my facebook with German Pirate Party articles about how it's a great idea to invest your pension in them It's a lot like investing in Forex except the currency you investing in is the currency of a country consisting of a person producing alpaca socks, some drug dealers, and a dozen ponzi schemes.
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# ? Feb 2, 2013 02:20 |
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I brought up the subject on my facebook of our current culture not being ready for automation of major industries. Someone very Republican responded with, to paraphrase, "If you care so much about jobs, why don't we return to the older eras where common people would need to work tirelessly out in the fields doing grunt work? Personally I'd prefer a society where robots deal with most of the work so that I could have more free time". Responding to that, I pointed out that the problem with this sort of automation is that it passes the savings onto the upper classes that honestly don't need the extra money, while factoring out entire industries of low-skill labor without introducing many new types of professions for those that would be put out of work. I'm 90% sure he's going to respond asking where I'm basing this on, and while I could just as easily say "the nature of our capitalist society demands more profits for shareholders and business owners, not more jobs for the people who actually sustain the economy", I'd like to respond with specific examples where automation has directly hurt the working class. Does anyone have any comprehensive reading material on this particular subject? It's something I'd like to have more substantial knowledge on.
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# ? Feb 5, 2013 02:19 |
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miscellaneous14 posted:I brought up the subject on my facebook of our current culture not being ready for automation of major industries. Someone very Republican responded with, to paraphrase, "If you care so much about jobs, why don't we return to the older eras where common people would need to work tirelessly out in the fields doing grunt work? Personally I'd prefer a society where robots deal with most of the work so that I could have more free time". This article (and lots more, google productivity vs. wages) has a nice graph and gets at the core issue. Productivity has increased over the past decades, but wages, especially for the working class, have stagnated. The problem, as you've correctly identified, is under capitalism the wages all go to the top: (from this article) However, that's not really an argument against automation, it's more of an argument against our perverse economic system.
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# ? Feb 5, 2013 08:48 |
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It actually just hit me a few hours ago that I was working in the theater industry around when they were implementing digital projectors, and a ton of projectionists got laid off as a result, so I responded with that example. That chart and the associated info will help deal with the occasional "upper class have all these taxes while the lower classes are living it up" nonsense I run into occasionally though. Thanks!
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# ? Feb 5, 2013 09:57 |
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miscellaneous14 posted:That chart and the associated info will help deal with the occasional "upper class have all these taxes while the lower classes are living it up" nonsense I run into occasionally though. Thanks! How will they manage: I'm living it up down here at the low-end: (Note: This is net) What with all my low-tax living:
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# ? Feb 5, 2013 10:02 |
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As long as we're not appropriating the value we create as a society for the benefit of society then you'll have issues like that, I suppose. Jacobin had two articles about something that is tangentially related to this, by (I think) Frase and Ackerman, the 'work of anti-work', and what it's responding to. Jacobin's come under some fire lately but those articles are still good introductory material for the topic. I prefer reading Frase at the source: http://www.peterfrase.com/category/anti-star-trek/ Frase posted:People know my beat by now, so everyone has been directing my attention to Paul Krugman’s recent musings on the pace of automation in the economy. He moves away from his earlier preoccupation with worker skills, and toward the possibility of “‘capital-biased technological change’, which tends to shift the distribution of income away from workers to the owners of capital.” He goes on to present data showing the secular decline in labor’s share of income since the 1970′s. Claude Bitot, "Communism has not yet begun", arguing for an emphasis on the expansion of the productive forces as the objective condition for communism (which I agree with for what it's worth). http://libcom.org/library/communism-has-not-yet-begun-claude-bitot Bitot posted:From this end of the historical cycle of capitalism, which could encompass an entire period (measured on this scale, 30 or 50 years are nothing), and which will be, as it advances, the stage for increasingly severe economic crises accompanied by equally severe social crises, we do not deduce the “possibility” of communism, but its imperious necessity. In other words, we are saying that communism (which all the bourgeois commentators have announced is dead and buried) will rise from the ashes like the Phoenix, not because it is a “beautiful utopia” (there is no more utopia!) but because it will be inscribed along determinist lines that leave no other choice other than this way out, the only one that is viable due to the enormous development of the productive forces which has taken place, henceforth rendering any steps backward towards earlier forms of exploitation and domination impractical, as is demonstrated by the failures—whatever anyone may say—of the various regressive movements we have seen (religious fundamentalisms, micro-nationalisms, ethnic identity movements), which are capable of causing harm but which are still incapable of transforming their gloomy dreams into reality. There is a distinct lack of Marxist / Leftist works dealing with cybernetics and robotization that don't devolve into libertarian fetishism like Kurzweil or Star Trek liberalism, sadly. SSJ2 Goku Wilders fucked around with this message at 10:18 on Feb 5, 2013 |
# ? Feb 5, 2013 10:08 |
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# ? Apr 28, 2024 08:59 |
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Accretionist posted:Yeah, all those taxes: I'm confused. The tax rate by quintile chart shows the top quintile (that means, the top fifth of people if sorted by income, right?) having the highest effective tax rate. The taxable and non-taxable units by income chart also shows the highest incomes having the lowest deductions. Is your point that it's income inequality alone that has grown, but that the tax burden has actually kept up with this?
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# ? Feb 5, 2013 23:11 |