many "pro-capitalist" people itt would do well to read up on alternate models of capitalism besides the anglo-saxon one, like german & japanese.

You raise an interesting point; the counterargument being that USA is #1 and those WWII-losing "countries" can gtfo

the best part of the german model is the high level of vocational training so people who arent meant for college dont get themselves in huge debt to earn a history of trains degree.

if you read up on it, your eyes might be opened to some of the aspects in which we are decidedly not #1.

You can agree with everything I wrote there and still be a capitalist, for example if you think there are no workable alternatives or if you think that capitalism's (posited) increased production makes up for unhappiness resulting from unequal distribution.

But whatever your favored socio-economic structure, you need at least to keep in mind that utility (in the making people happy sense) is not a simple function of amount of wealth (defined broadly). If (big if, perhaps) the goal is making people happy, then you have to look at what actually does that ... and there's a decent argument that more Lexuses and MacBook Pros isn't really the answer.

people need the power to pursue whatever gives them meaning in their lives. this, more than things, is what makes us happy. reducing unemployment >>>>> increasing aggregate GDP.

i recommend Coming Apart: The State of White America, by charles murray

'kay, I figured the thread might need a little shot of communism free of MBesque demagoguery, but I see everything's fine without me. Tata.

Happiness is overrated.

someone please tell me where people live in a world without property

Smurf village?

Nobody "owns" a house

Acts 2:

And all that believed were together, and had all things common;
And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.

yup, we all just pay rent to the govt in taxes.

lol

it would be a much better world for cats i guess

I assume dkgo, and others, are being disingenuous/obtuse about property=theft. Like, it's not a complicated idea to get, semantics aside. I'm not saying it's true just the notion that "theft" can't exist without "property" is absurd. Kokiri explained it pretty easily..

be happy with what you have, serfs!

yea, these sum up the discussion well.

Why can't you both appreciate the risk involved with owning/operating a business and still think things are skewed in a way that exploits the workers?

As for the workers labor value being dictated by supply and demand..LOLOLOL. Supply and demand is efficient and maybe all we can manage but it certainly isn't inherently fair and settling for it without "checks and balances" is mehhhhhhhhhh.

its not complicated to "get", its complicated to understand how one could possibly think living by that theory would make life better

stop me where i am wrong

without property, you can own nothing

if you are unable to own anything, you cannot be compensated for labor with money/items/stuff you can keep

how does this society evolve from here? everyone is a slave who creates things to be shared for the "public good"? what if they refuse, are they outted from the world?

Okay, that makes a lot more sense. I'm ill-equipped to discuss the merits of anarchism or socialism but I pretty sure refuting them isn't as easy as you seem to think it is. You seem to be really getting bogged down in the semantics. Ownership would just be defined differently.

People are certainly self-interested but I also believe people have an inherent desire to work to sustain themselves. Citing rampant apathy and uncountable cases of people taking advantage of communal systems doesn't say much about what's possible...

Its not semantics, its the entire crux of his worldview. As long as there is any form of ownership then someone is going to own more than someone else. You would have to have nothing but subsistence farming and little shacks open for everyone to sleep in I guess. I'd rather be "poor" relative to some other people than transported back several centuries

Please god no.

I really like your first para, but not Charles Murray and not that book doubly so.

It's like the only lesson you attended at logic school was how to do a reductio ad absurdum. Sadly, you'd get an F even for that.

he's my favorite libertarian, and he's one of the few reasonable ones.

what do you find objectionable about murray?

Apart from being a racist? He's just wrong about everything. I thought it would be hard to top the Bell Curve for wrong, but Coming Apart trumped it. It's just wrong to see a moral lesson in poverty. I'd say that if you completely reversed his thesis, you'd be correct.

but there is a large moral component to poverty. i mean, those guys on the right are right about some things.

as for being a racist, some of the scholarship in the bell curve might be erroneous, but for the most part, it is an empirical study. "racist" really isn't a good objection to it imo.

I don't think there actually is a moral component to poverty, if what you mean to say is that people are lazy and get what they deserve, or they prefer drinking to working, or whatever nonsense.

Okay, so the Bell Curve is "empirical". Here's my empirical study. I say that having a broad nose and large lips shows that you're stupid. Now I'm off to count broad noses and large lips. What? Come on, I can define them strictly, so it's science, right?