[bluekachina]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cid_Yama', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pretorian', 'T')his is a competitive world we have here

[americandream]

Cough, cough. Yeah. Bill Gates. Sounds like we will be sanctifying the holy Bill Gates at the rate we're going.

[bluekachina]

Adam Smith said:

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, cloath and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, cloathed and lodged. (WN I.viii.36).

This only makes common sense. To deny them at least this much, would result in eventual rebellion, and the very system that maintains the power of the ruling class would collapse.

You know, killing the goose that lays the golden eggs?

[americandream]

In the country where greed is a virtue, equity has departed.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('bluekachina', 'A')dam Smith said:

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, cloath and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, cloathed and lodged. (WN I.viii.36).

This only makes common sense. To deny them at least this much, would result in eventual rebellion, and the very system that maintains the power of the ruling class would collapse.

You know, killing the goose that lays the golden eggs?

[Pretorian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('bluekachina', '
')Social mobility in western nations is largely a myth. Propaganda for the masses.

It is a clear fact that, in a rigged system, competition is thwarted.

Pretending that the masses are not subjugated does not make it so.

It seems that it is you, Pretorian, that refuses to face facts, and prefer to live among your ideological delusions.

[ian807]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pretorian', 'S')till there is a mobility. If you are willing to make sacrifices and take the risks, that is.

[Pretorian]

"Those who seek fortunes, more than rarely di find them. Those who do not seek them, do not find them ever.

[Cid_Yama]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]A thought-terminating cliché is a commonly used phrase, sometimes passing as folk wisdom, used to quell cognitive dissonance. Though the phrase in and of itself may be valid in certain contexts, its application as a means of dismissing dissent or justifying fallacious logic is what makes it thought-terminating.

Lifton said, “The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.”

In George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the fictional constructed language Newspeak is designed to reduce language entirely to a set of thought-terminating clichés.

[Shar_Lamagne]

Capitalism was supposed to provide us with the best quality products at the lowest possible cost. Right? Well, we all know how that worked out.

We get the crappiest products at the higest price the market will bear.

It's all been one big scam.

Why does anyone even believe anymore?

[americandream]

In the words of one of history's great myths, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do."

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Shar_Lamagne', 'C')apitalism was supposed to provide us with the best quality products at the lowest possible cost. Right? Well, we all know how that worked out.

We get the crappiest products at the higest price the market will bear.

It's all been one big scam.

Why does anyone even believe anymore?

[MarkJ]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Shar_Lamagne', 'C')apitalism was supposed to provide us with the best quality products at the lowest possible cost. Right? Well, we all know how that worked out.

We get the crappiest products at the higest price the market will bear.

It's all been one big scam.

Why does anyone even believe anymore?

[ian807]

The actual effect of capitalism is to provide ever rising levels of mediocrity. Most non-luxury items become "Wal-Marted" - just good enough to sell, and no more.

At first, new items are expensive and high quality (e.g. cell phones). Economic forces soon enforce minimum quality, and we get disposable cell phones that break in a high wind.

I'm not quibbling about this, by the way. It's worked for centuries now and many more of us do, undeniably have a higher standard of living in most ways, than our ancestors did.

[Pretorian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Shar_Lamagne', 'C')apitalism was supposed to provide us with the best quality products at the lowest possible cost. Right? Well, we all know how that worked out.

We get the crappiest products at the higest price the market will bear.

It's all been one big scam.

Why does anyone even believe anymore?

[dsula]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Shar_Lamagne', 'W')e get the crappiest products at the higest price the market will bear.

It's all been one big scam.

Why does anyone even believe anymore?

[Shar_Lamagne]

the original post:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cid_Yama', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')ociety, however, cannot subsist among those who are at all times ready to hurt and injure one another. The moment that injury begins, the moment that mutual resentment and animosity take place, all the bands of it are broke asunder, and the different members of which it consisted are, as it were, dissipated and scattered abroad by the violence and opposition of their discordant affections. If there is any society among robbers and murderers, they must at least, according to the trite observation, abstain from robbing and murdering one another. Beneficence, therefore, is less essential to the existence of society than justice. Society may subsist, though not in the most comfortable state, without beneficence; but the prevalence of injustice must utterly destroy it. (TMS II.ii.3.3)

What chiefly enrages us against the man who injures or insults us, is the little account which he seems to make of us, the unreasonable preference which he gives to himself above us, and that absurd self-love, by which he seems to imagine, that other people may be sacrificed at any time, to his conveniency or his humour. The glaring impropriety of this conduct, the gross insolence and injustice which it seems to involve in it, often shock and exasperate us more than all the mischief which we have suffered. To bring him back to a more just sense of what is due to other people, to make him sensible of what he owes us, and of the wrong that he has done to us, is frequently the principal end proposed in our revenge, which is always imperfect when it cannot accomplish this.(TMS II.iii.1.5)

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, cloath and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, cloathed and lodged. (WN I.viii.36).

An educated populace can, to a degree, regulate political actors who may wish to take advantage of inequalities for their own benefit. The uneducated are easily misled and suffer for it. The more the ‘inferior ranks of people’ are instructed, Smith says,

the less liable they are to the delusions of enthusiasm and superstition, which among ignorant nations, frequently occasion the most dreadful disorder. An instructed and intelligent people besides are always more decent and orderly than an ignorant and stupid one. They feel themselves, each individually, more respectable, and more likely to obtain the respect of their lawful superiors, and they are therefore more disposed to respect those superiors. They are more disposed to examine, and more capable of seeing through, the interested complaints of faction and sedition, and they are, upon that account, less apt to be misled into any wanton or unnecessary opposition to the measures of government. In free countries, where the safety of government depends very much upon the favourable judgment which the people may form of its conduct, it must surely be of the highest importance that they should not be disposed to judge rashly or capriciously concerning it.(WN V.i.f.61)

[americandream]

Excellent post shar_lamagne!

[Shar_Lamagne]

Thanks.

[patience]

Thanks, Cid, for your posts. I have always enjoyed them. It is a shame they often draw fire like this one has. Thanks also for the rest of you who contributed well to this thread.

I just hate having to wade through the less-than-stellar thinking to get to the good stuff. This forum used to be really nice. Quite a loss to become what I see here now all too often. I still check in from time to time, but less often lately.

Just so it doesn't go over anyone's head here, it is folks like you Pretorian, that I object to.

I'll go back to other forums now, where this sort of thing is not tolerated.

[vision-master]

Those doomer cult 4ums? I quit one today.

[Shar_Lamagne]

What an excellent example of what Patience was talking about. Thank you Vision Master.