not sure if serious. did i misread you? are you literally saying that laziness does not cause poverty, or that getting pregnant as an unmarried teen does not cause poverty?

i don't think we can continue down this path without violating some forum rules.

I think you have the causation the wrong way round.

And since when were the poor lazy? Do you even know anyone who's poor? The notion that the poor deserve their lot was invented by rich white guys who want to believe that they have everything they have purely on merit. That isn't how the world works.

I don't see how forum rules have anything to do with it. Murray is a flat-out racist. See the interwebz for one of the many debunkings of the "science" in his screed.

Next we'll be doing blacks are lazier than whites because they make up more of the poor, and we've already decided the poor are only poor because they're lazy.

***

All in all, a pretty poor choice of argument tbh. I am poor myself but by no means lazy. I just live in a place where industries have shifted and left me without work to do. That's pretty tough and it's not simply a matter of saying I'm smart, wave a magic wand and work your way out of it.

Also, my stepkids are black and I really ****ing resent rich white men from a country that has spent nearly its whole existence ensuring that blacks do not get the same headstart whites do writing books suggesting that the reason that blacks don't do well in life is because they're dumb and that's genetic.

I think on average, if you strip a rich person of his wealth, in time he will become rich again.

and also the reverse:

On average, if you gift a poor person a windfall of wealth, in time he will become poor again.

I'm fairly sure there is an Estonian saying that expresses the above.

this is how a lot of pointless politics debates start. one person says a problem is caused by x. another says it's caused by y. but perhaps both x and y have something to do with it, and we ought to investigate the ways in which the problem might be ameliorated by dealing with both x and y in their turn.

I am guessing you are rich. And you are wrong. If I put you into a different environment, where you're not comfortable and do not have connections, and made you poor, I'm pretty sure you'd remain poor.

The bit about giving someone poor a windfall is probably true enough though. It's a bit of a cliche that lottery winners spend it all and return to the life they once led.


While I agree with the sentiment you express here, I do not agree that that's the disagreement we are having here.

monkey is mad at me for being ecumenical in my beliefs about the etiology of our social ills. i guess he figured i was on his side from my posting earlier today, but then i drop this on him. sorry, pardner.

as for our differences on the issue at hand, i think i'll just quit this discussion. this was a fun foray into the politics thread. i may return in another month.

I'm not mad at you. This thread is chockers with scions of privilege who think they deserve it all and everyone who doesn't have it deserves what they get too. I don't hate people for their perspective because I accept that thinking outside it is hard.

And you wouldn't even get an f for explainining how your little system would work because you haven't done it yet. All you've done is say a bunch of things suck while offering no real world alternatives

Any change has to be incremental, so I doubt you'd be all that impressed with what I'd suggest. I'd also need the government to yield its coercive power. Can't see you being much in favour of that either.

Only if you define the fun of creating stuff or the fun of giving stuff to others as wealth as well.

Nice propaganda/dogma mixture that makes it really hard to criticize Marxism.

So basically every non-rich person is just flat out dumb?

Needs a disclaimer of "in western society".

I'd also claim that if everyone had nothing people would be less happy than if everyone had a lot but one dude had a ****ton more which is in direct logical opposition to your claim if I'm reading it correctly.
Comparing happyness across people is a futile exercise though.

I agree and disagree at the same time. It's also a lot harder to hire some slob from the street and just have them learn on the job. Overall decent education for the average person was always held as a very high ideal here though. I agree with the general idea but disagree with how it's implemented obviously.
If you compare the social status of teachers in the US and here you get a decent idea.

I think a somewhat unexplored fact is interesting as well. We have a bunch of state involvment like most countries but I think our state employees are more efficient/less wastefull on average than others. I can't really back this up with any data and it's only a gut feeling. Traditionally German state/federal employees have been somewhat elitist but also for the most part took some pride in being efficient.

I mean you can always complain from both extremes i.e. as an anarchist you can just roll out the "lol state" and as a statist you can always roll out "more state will fix that" but the middle ground is certainly worth exploring. Coming form the anarchist side that would look something like "I'll just accept that there will always be some amount of state but under that assumption how can we get the state that exist to actually be least inefficient". I think Germany unknowingly is on a decent track in that regard.

Economies are really ****ing hard to understand though and it's silly to make a claim like I just did and think you have found the one or two key components. I also think that national borders matter a lot less than most people think. There was some decent business climate when some big companies were built, the founders happened from a certain country and once they grew the country autoprofits. It's not that hard for me to imagine an alternate universe in which all the German car companies are British for example.

I think that's one thing the Austrians got dead right. Interpreting economic snapshots or making predicitons is really an entrepreneurial act that is deeply rooted in the knowledge problem and it's impossible to get it objectively right.

Subjective theory of value in the house.

Start from scratch in a hypothetical society. How does the economy start and develop with no property rights.

I strongly disagree with the "it's just semantics" crowd. That's a hip position to take but ownership and property are very essential point in every society. It's well worth having a very strong opinion on the "mere semantics" of this "trivial stuff".

Do I own my body or not has very clear implications for murder, torture, drug use, abortions and so forth. If "yawn semantics" are used in life and death situations I think it's mendatory for everyone to stop yawning and start thinking about this stuff.

You are the one essentially claiming "the poor" are dumb because they keep working eventhough they know they are being exploited.

Are you mad because you're not rich? You can reverse this argument and just say "oh look Monkey is a poor slob so he's obviously going to argue that the rich only got rich by exploiting because he can't explain why he isn't rich except for pointing to unfairness"

The problem with this argument is that people's perception of wealth inequality, which must be what causes unhappiness, is not closely related to actual wealth inequality. There's got to be a nonzero percentage of society that thinks Paris Hilton is the richest person in America.

Aaron Brown's book with the title something like 'Wall Street's Poker Face' suggests that poker and the futures markets of america emerged from essentially the same environment and have more in common that common history of futures markets would have you believe, so maybe that's where we are.

The corollary of this is you can take the position that the current economic system in, say US/UK and perhaps even the broad international arena, is misfunctioning and needs reform without necessarily being a frothing at the mouth communist.

I'm sure that there is an aptitude-driven element of outcomes, and i'm sure that it's pretty strong. I'm equally sure that there are environment-elements that are probably about as important, give or take.

Put george bush in a family run by two detroit shop workers. You think he becomes president? You think he 'makes it'?

I wasn't serious, I was setting a trap for MB, and he did not disappoint.

MB I'm still curious to know which of GJ's positions would destroy the country or turn it into feudalism and how Obama/Romney would handle it differently, and why I'm insane for wanting to vote GJ. You've made a lot of big claims and I've asked you to explain them many times but you've been avoiding the questions.

Sanga, if you look back a bit, MB made some cool posts summarising the relative merits of the GOP runners.
probably better to click through to the orig posts, since i can't be arsed to format them nicely.

TY kokiri. Tho it seems to me pretty jokey and not specific. I get that he hates GJ and thinks he's be a disaster, I just want to know why with some specifics. He said he'd vote for Obama but GJ is the devil and that just doesn't make any sense to me.

lol

cliffs: EVERYONE SUCKS BECAUSE I SAID SO

well, i mean, all those guys definitely suck so ....

im still waiting for anyone to explain how this ideal propertyless society would work

Sufur why does GJ suck? Do any of the presidential candidates not suck?