You are going to feel as if I am picking on you for a bit. This is only because you are stating some interesting things that I think are provably false.

Capitalism in one country doesn't create those problems in other countries. Those problems have existed since we climbed down from the trees.

There has always been famine when the weather doesn't cooperate, slavery when some are stronger than others, and disease is inherent to life.

No I swear I'm not, I realize what I'm saying is out there and different and may seem wrong to you. But I'm being sincere, I started posting here a bit so I could relate to people without having my real life friends think im crazy

I'm not sure if I understand exactly but if I do I want to say I don't think its changing the subject, I think the problems come from thinking these things aren't completely interrelated.

I think you are saying that the since the topic is capitalism, that suggest we should be analyzing capitalistic nations only, and the relationship between the rich and the poor within them. If thats what you were saying I think we are missing a large part of the world that capitalism effects and should be brought into the analyses.

if thats off topic then i apologize. and feel free to ignore me I'd certainly understand

That is patently untrue. Poor people have always had little/no access to basic healthcare. You were expected, if poor, to do the decent thing and die as quietly as possible if you had any significant disease or injury.

Add in that what we consider "basic healthcare" has improved leaps and bounds (new and improved treatments) over the last couple of decades, and I think your point is crushed.

It is a superstition in precisely the same was as a friendship is a superstition.

They won't, but if they did, I guess we'd plummet into the sun.

Then dollars would be worth a bit less. People who kept all their wealth in dollars would be a bit sad. Those who had bought things with their dollars would be pretty happy.

Then diamonds would be worth less. People who bought diamonds previous to the discovery would be sad.

Yes the same as friendship as we view it today, but I'd like to point out its possible to have friendship or relationship that is not based on superstition.

But surely we wouldn't all be rich for that short while.


Point is it doesn't increase the wealth of everyone.

yes they are expensive because not everyone can have them, if everyone did they would be worthless. Wealth is worthless when we all have it, therefore its not wealth anymore. By definition everyone cannot be rich at once. Rich is a comparison of who has more. We can all be equal though, but we can't all be anything else.

It is not.

Did someone say we would?

I think you typed that wrong. It wouldn't increase the net wealth of the world.

If I enjoy shiney things, I'd still enjoy having diamonds even if you also had diamonds.

Not everything is relative to one's neighbor. I really don't mind if you have more than me if I have enough. I can only eat and drink so much, and don't feel particularly non-wealthy if you have a bigger appetite, so long as I am satiated.

Ok maybe its not but Bruce lee believed it was, because he heard JKrishnamurti describe how to do it.


I think so..?







yes that seems fine if your saying i needed to say 'you can't simultaneously increase everyones (capitalistic) wealth.'

no you would want cubic zirconia, which i think is ironic?

for now im just suggesting capitalistic wealth is

we haven't called for opinions on that I think, but would you mind if it the wealthier people meant many didn't get satiated?

I might have missed your point Chezslaw, but if you're saying that people who lived to 80 on average had overall higher life satisfaction than people who lived to 90, eh, I'd have to see some very compelling evidence to accept this view. Of course, focusing purely on increasing life expectancy is a little dumb, but with contempoary analitical methods it seems like a decent metric to follow, especially in a society where health care is more or less equally attainable.

It does seem that the body has a general use by date, which can be increased by living a more healthy life style, and that medication can allow one to use all of their body's resources but after a certain point, medication is keeping one's depleted body in a vegetable like state, and it would be interesting if a mean age with little variance for this occurence was found and it was actually not particulary high, like around 70-80.

Everybody can't be rich at once? Sure. But does this mean the poor in different societies will have access to the same resources, and must equally suffer? Being poor in Australia offers a fairly easy life, but that isn't the case for Liberia.

Inequity aversion is a normal response and is documented in multiple species. In a society that has the vast majority of the wealth in the hands of a minority, whilst a fair proportion are without basic healthcare and stressed over their economical circumstaces, some even being homeless, I think it's fairly well justified.

I'm not claiming that at all. Most of those people who die at 80 will have made the same hopeful decisions as those who live to 90, that's part of the poor thinking when people give up loads now in the hope of the best outcomes rather than anything realistic.


Yes though I'd say more than a little dumb. It does have the advantage of being easy to measure which must be nice.

At the very least there should be some thought about how much is being given up. No doubt my life expectancy would go up if I gave up the highpoints of my everyday life and added loads of bits I dont like - its one hell of a price

The problem with your point for life quality is that was the same argument for people that smoked/are smoking heavily. Not to mention your "give up loads now in the hope of the best outcomes" is a pretty subjective nature on what you are giving if you are giving at all.

And I've touched this in my previous posts. Humans mostly rationalizing their decisions and having confirmation bias ....pretty much as you are here

I'm sure this is the case some of the time, but I doubt it is most of the time. Generally speaking, greater life expectancy=greater health=greater happiness, and I can only think of a handful exceptions to this.

It is the same argument, its the correct argument.

Of course, its entirely subjective. What else could it be?

lol, this is a matter of logic not rationalisation. We haven't begun to consider the actual decisions. All I'm saying is that to be rational you need to consider likely outcomes rather than the best outcomes. You're so deperate to believe it will all be great that you cant even bring yourself think about the reality.

There has to be a rather unnormal dynamic occuring for smoking to be the optimal play.
Wrong, one needs to consider the likelihood of the event occuring, multiplied by the utility gained by said event, and than measure it up against the oppurtunity cost to determine whether it's optimal.

Some of the time is enough for my point.

but its really a question of cost and discounting the future. Presumambly nearly everyone would have a price they wouldn't be willing to pay for a small chance of some extra time.

Hardly, I'm pretty sure you are advocating only worst case scenarios as your argument and are stuck in the notion that longer life brings suffering 100%...