Materialism and Greed are Killing Us

[Dr. Who]

Okay. I am not promising you any noble words here but:

Money is the only true measure of worth. Talk is cheap. Praise is cheap. Payment means they have to put out for it as proof. This is why even the very rich want more.

Need is the mother of invention. The need for more money is the only reason that most things are created. Without it you would still be talking through 2 cans on a string.

This is why Socialism does not work and lowering taxes does work. People want more. So the man on the assembly line is paid to do more and with better quality in a capitalist society and then possibly get promoted. In Socialism you do not get rewarded so you spend your time trying to cheat the system to do less because you cannot get more. For the managers and owners they are trying to earn more by producing more. Their production is profits.

When it is earned then it is worth more. That is why so many lottery winners or people with inheritances end up broke or dead.

Socialists forget what motivates people. If all I can make is $100 a day no matter what I do then I choose golf and skipping work, like the lazy people that want socialism and free stuff today. Just send me the check. Everyone else will do the same and government then has to threaten to starve you, if you do not produce what they require. We call that slavery.

The left's idea of Utopia is actually a nightmare for them and everyone else.

Then it's rather odd that the people who contribute the most to all forms of advancement, whether it be science or technology, are often making very little money. Many discoveries come out of universities, from the efforts of unpaid students. People have more than one currency. Among the academic 'class', money is not really the driving force. It's the subject matter that drives them and the big corporations are only too happy to trade donations for exclusive rights to those discoveries. I have yet to meet a wealthy programmer or research scientist.

While money is a useful carrot to dangle in front of people in a world where you need money to live, if there were no such thing as money, would people just stay in bed all day?

[Refugee]

Okay. I am not promising you any noble words here but:

Money is the only true measure of worth. Talk is cheap. Praise is cheap. Payment means they have to put out for it as proof. This is why even the very rich want more.

Need is the mother of invention. The need for more money is the only reason that most things are created. Without it you would still be talking through 2 cans on a string.

This is why Socialism does not work and lowering taxes does work. People want more. So the man on the assembly line is paid to do more and with better quality in a capitalist society and then possibly get promoted. In Socialism you do not get rewarded so you spend your time trying to cheat the system to do less because you cannot get more. For the managers and owners they are trying to earn more by producing more. Their production is profits.

When it is earned then it is worth more. That is why so many lottery winners or people with inheritances end up broke or dead.

Socialists forget what motivates people. If all I can make is $100 a day no matter what I do then I choose golf and skipping work, like the lazy people that want socialism and free stuff today. Just send me the check. Everyone else will do the same and government then has to threaten to starve you, if you do not produce what they require. We call that slavery.

The left's idea of Utopia is actually a nightmare for them and everyone else.

Laissez-faire capitalism and socialism have something in common and that is they don’t represent the majority. One leads to corporate fascism and the other to communist collectivization. Both favour the elite.

Businesses run on profit and cater to the highest price the market will stand. If people have more money the price will go up to make more profit. The Trump tax cut will have long since disappeared as prices rise. Similarly, if the minimum wage goes up that will not come out of profit, the cost will be passed onto the consumer. It’s a catch 22 situation, the more you get the less you can afford.

If money is the measure of worth and individual greed is good it’s why you got someone like Trump and a divided society.

[Chris]

Laissez-faire capitalism and socialism have something in common and that is they don’t represent the majority. One leads to corporate fascism and the other to communist collectivization. Both favour the elite.

Businesses run on profit and cater to the highest price the market will stand. If people have more money the price will go up to make more profit. The Trump tax cut will have long since disappeared as prices rise. Similarly, if the minimum wage goes up that will not come out of profit, the cost will be passed onto the consumer. It’s a catch 22 situation, the more you get the less you can afford.

If money is the measure of worth and individual greed is good it’s why you got someone like Trump and a divided society.

There's one other similarity between capitalism and socialism and that's that socialism is merely a variation of capitalism and that variation does away with private property. Socialism aims to take ownership of capital from private owners and give it to the workers with the promise that that will increase production to the point it will do away with scarcity. As to the topic, just exchange wealth for power--the greed is the same, the corruption is the same.

[Collateral Damage]

Then it's rather odd that the people who contribute the most to all forms of advancement, whether it be science or technology, are often making very little money. Many discoveries come out of universities, from the efforts of unpaid students. People have more than one currency. Among the academic 'class', money is not really the driving force. It's the subject matter that drives them and the big corporations are only too happy to trade donations for exclusive rights to those discoveries. I have yet to meet a wealthy programmer or research scientist.
While money is a useful carrot to dangle in front of people in a world where you need money to live, if there were no such thing as money, would people just stay in bed all day?

You haven't met a wealthy programmer? Does Bill Gates or Steve Jobs ring a bell? Every industry has it's wealthy people, who started out on the bottom, but used their abilities and creative talents to innovate....

For as long as governments are willing to give people money (and I won't go into the sources of money) for not doing something productive, there will be people who will take advantage of it.

As to those who become professional students, they apply for grants and loans to assist them in their endeavors. Some are subsidized from private sources, depending on the ultimate goal. Bottom line, if someone wants to eat, it needs to come from somewhere. There are direct means of feeding ones self, and indirect means. It's a choice.

[Refugee]

Nothing happening today wasn’t happening before. Of course, it’s now bigger, more hidden, disguised … The elite of the ‘tribe’ are still as corrupt, laws replace instant justice, torture is forbidden, but it’s all done in a much nicer way. It’s called civilized behaviour. In theory, I suppose you could have a society where everyone has an input and the majority prevail, but that would be called democracy and leave many dissatisfied.

Were hunter gathers egalitarian, because you’d have to go back tens of thousands of years to find anything remotely resembling equality, but then they could hardly be called a society, but a few individuals banding together who’d discovered they had more chance of survival hunting as a ‘pack.’. As soon as these groups converged leaders would emerge from the fittest and most able and rules would be made.

It’s why you can’t have egalitarianism. Someone will always want more than someone else. You also can’t collectivize because those who have don’t want to give their share away. The nearest we get is democracy and even historically, that’s a new idea. Wherever groups gather, there will always be a hierarchy.

[Chris]

Nothing happening today wasn’t happening before. Of course, it’s now bigger, more hidden, disguised … The elite of the ‘tribe’ are still as corrupt, laws replace instant justice, torture is forbidden, but it’s all done in a much nicer way. It’s called civilized behaviour. In theory, I suppose you could have a society where everyone has an input and the majority prevail, but that would be called democracy and leave many dissatisfied.

Were hunter gathers egalitarian, because you’d have to go back tens of thousands of years to find anything remotely resembling equality, but then they could hardly be called a society, but a few individuals banding together who’d discovered they had more chance of survival hunting as a ‘pack.’. As soon as these groups converged leaders would emerge from the fittest and most able and rules would be made.

It’s why you can’t have egalitarianism. Someone will always want more than someone else. You also can’t collectivize because those who have don’t want to give their share away. The nearest we get is democracy and even historically, that’s a new idea. Wherever groups gather, there will always be a hierarchy.

Egalitarianism ruled society 300000 plus years, even into the formation of tribes and the emergence of sedentarism. It was only with the concentration of populations in cities and the concentration of power in a few that hierarchy emerged. But that hierarchy from the ancient city to late Middle Ages was governed by family, religion, guild, and other shared-value groupings, and was even unto vassalage mutually interdependent. In the late Middle Ages, when the nobility stepped up, individualism arose as an ideology, mercantilism was replaced by capitalism, and monarchy was uprooted by democracy, do you see the rise of the modern state over the individual with no social order to protect him, natural liberty replaced by civil liberty, and the loss of all shared values for diversification and globalism.

[Refugee]

Egalitarianism ruled society 300000 plus years, even into the formation of tribes and the emergence of sedentarism. It was only with the concentration of populations in cities and the concentration of power in a few that hierarchy emerged. But that hierarchy from the ancient city to late Middle Ages was governed by family, religion, guild, and other shared-value groupings, and was even unto vassalage mutually interdependent. In the late Middle Ages, when the nobility stepped up, individualism arose as an ideology, mercantilism was replaced by capitalism, and monarchy was uprooted by democracy, do you see the rise of the modern state over the individual with no social order to protect him, natural liberty replaced by civil liberty, and the loss of all shared values for diversification and globalism.

I think you’ll find there was no such thing as ‘society’ 300K years ago. Before the cities and in an agrarian society, in the west were Monarchs and landowners and elsewhere tribal chiefs. The Middle-Ages had guilds and religion, but it was allowed under the supervision of a monarchal hierarchy and for their benefit. The modern state is simply another form of control, different from but the same as. Previously, social order was maintained by the nobility and Church, today by politicians using law. There is no ‘natural’ order, it’s a theory.

[Chris]

I think you’ll find there was no such thing as ‘society’ 300K years ago. Before the cities and in an agrarian society, in the west were Monarchs and landowners and elsewhere tribal chiefs. The Middle-Ages had guilds and religion, but it was allowed under the supervision of a monarchal hierarchy and for their benefit. The modern state is simply another form of control, different from but the same as. Previously, social order was maintained by the nobility and Church, today by politicians using law. There is no ‘natural’ order, it’s a theory.

I think you're quibbling about the definition of society.

Hunter-gathers formed societies. All the way up to the Middle Ages, there were societies, formed amd, as you even say, ordered naturally around family, religion, and shared values. Indeed, this is theory where theory is descriptive, as in science.

What there was not was civil society, which came about by social contract theory. Theory where theory is prescriptive.



@ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/...nalCode=cele20

But I'm not interested in semantics, so the floor is all yours.

[Mister D]

I think you're all talking past one another. Human beings are social creatures and thus society is simply part and parcel of our existence. Human social life entails society. Yes, I would say that society per se is perfectly natural. I was would also say that there was always order in human communities. Society likewise entails order of some kind. The state is not necessary. This is demonstrable both historically and anthropologically.

Now you can make the argument that modern lives require a complex state structure but that doesn't mean there aren't different ways to live. It also doesn't mean that the state was inevitable. It could also be argued that the state was a phenomenon whose origin lies more in violence and coercion than development.

[Chris]

I think you're all talking past one another. Human beings are social creatures and thus society is simply part and parcel of our existence. Human social life entails society. Yes, I would say that society per se is perfectly natural. I was would also say that there was always order in human communities. Society likewise entails order of some kind. The state is not necessary. This is demonstrable both historically and anthropologically.

Now you can make the argument that modern lives require a complex state structure but that doesn't mean there aren't different ways to live. It also doesn't mean that the state was inevitable. It could also be argued that the state was a phenomenon whose origin lies more in violence and coercion than development.

Yea, once the argument turns to semantics, dueling definitions, you're talking past each other.

Agree with the rest.

Primitive societies were violent, in raids, feuds (often over women) and territorial disputes and this only intensified as populations and power concentrated.