If you say something is not working, then you must have an example of something else that works. Or at least works better. What is it?
Here’s something for you to chew on, Stuart. It’s an excerpt from the Deleuze lectures I’ve been reading online:
“There are people who are so impotent that they are the ones who are dangerous, they are the ones who take power (pouvoir). And they can take power (pouvoir) ˜ so far away are the notions of power (puissance) and of power (pouvoir) ˜ the people of power (pouvoir) are the impotent who can only construct their power (pouvoir) on the sadness of others. They need sadness. They can only reign over slaves, and the slave is precisely the regime of the decrease of power (puissance). There are people who can only reign, who only acquire power (pouvoir) by way of sadness and by instituting a regime of sadness of the type: repent’, of the type hate someone’ and if you don’t have anyone to hate, hate yourself, etc.”
There are 2 ways to go about this: authority or force. Authority is when you have enough confidence in your process that you just do what you do and let others decide what they want to do with it. Force is what you do when you lack the confidence in your process to do what I previously described.
Satyr validates his beliefs on the misery of others. That’s all there is to it.
I believe an expansion of the public economy, that which eliminates the profit motive from providing basic needs, is the only response to global Capitalism. Capitalism needs to know that we are never fully dependent on it. Until it does, it will continue with the arrogance that underlies its exploitation. And if we don’t, we will become slaves.
We’re at a point where we need to consider socialism (something that doesn’t run on the mechanism of the profit motive) or we are fucked. Capitalism, as it is, is what will lead us to scenario similar to the movie The Road.
It won’t be the Mad Max scenario that the Neo-Neitzscheian Gospel of the Fanciful pray for. It will be a process of watching lives, environment, and the will to power just withering away. But then, let’s hope we get there before we go through the phase described by the movie Blade Runner, or the very real situation of Johannesburg in which 5% of the population live in wealth while the other 95 live abject poverty. District 9 wasn’t just a sci-fi movie: it was an observation and is the future of most Capitalist societies, as Neil Blomkamph rightly observes.
But the profit motive makes entrepreneurs responsive to basic needs. It creates a feedback mechanism such that when needs change the supplier adapts to satisfy the new needs. New products and services are created in response. If the profit motive is removed, the new needs do not have to be identified or satisfied …quickly or at all.
The hard core capitalists say that socialism is already in place in the US and elsewhere and that’s what is producing failure.
And it can go right on responding to new needs. I don’t care about that. It’s basic needs I’m concerned with. If Capitalism responds to new needs, that’s just extra. But basic needs are what we have to have in order to exist: food, shelter, and healthcare. And as long as we have to turn to Capitalism for those, we are slaves. The rest is just excess which Capitalism can have.
These are just false dichotomies - basic need and extra need. Old/existing need and new need.
Look at shelter. Populations grow and decline, people move around. During growth, ‘new’ shelter has to be constructed. Who will build it? Profit or non-profit builders?
Look at food. Is ‘basic’ food some ration of bread and water? Can someone supplying lobsters make a profit or is access to lobsters also basic food?
Is the profit factor to be removed from all aspects of food production and distribution? Growing food, transportation of food, preparation and selling food would all be non-profit? You could not even make a sandwich and sell it without a government agency checking how much you profited?
Good point. The profit motive has pre industrial, pre so called capitalistic origins. In feudal times, farmers would go to market to sell their produce, and of course they made a profit. The profit motive is not an invention of ideology,it an inherent part of human nature.
D63 and obe, when it comes to the issue of capitalism; I just want to say that I neither advocate any economic or political system, nor do I wish to make an argument against anyone specifically. Let me repeat what I said in my post on the morning of the 20th:
If I were to discuss these matters in a more hypothetical way, outside of my personal concerns, it would only be in the context of what systems and policies I would assume would be best for the world’s stability. Or, perhaps, in the context of what systems and policies would actually potentially improve the world - but only in the long run, such as the next hundred or more years.
I assumed you were claiming to be altruistic because it seemed you wished to do your part in helping society. If you had absolute power, as if you were a god, and could change the world to be the way you want it to be, and you got rid of all pain, then I would understand the argument that you would have done so selfishly, so that you would no longer have to worry about this contrast between you luck in being happy and other misery. But, I don’t understand how you would think you are more than a part of the solution, in which case your actions aren’t going to be the sole cause of the end of suffering. Of course that is assuming that suffering can be ended, which is another matter entirely.
My implication in my earlier post was that many modern first world people don’t live a life of suffering, and the liberal minded of them (which likely includes the majority of Americans who consider themselves conservative) like to think that by being kind or giving back to those who are outspoken yet polite is all that is needed, ignoring those who quietly suffer. When I said:
I didn’t mean to imply that I believed people must suffer to become a better person (not to say that I don’t believe that, it’s just that the philosophical issue of how suffering and nobility interrelate is another matter entirely). What I was implying is that when one is happy it is always at the expense of another, and if that happy person did not have to develop emotion calluses to continue living life in such a way - happy through them misery of others - it is because they have managed to delude themselves (or be deluded) into thinking that their happiness isn’t at the expense of others.
All that is necessary for this form of delusion is either ignorance of the world, or an ideological way of discounting the ignorance of the world. For the liberal that I was referring to in the above quote: Firstly, he doesn’t have to see those who are suffering regularly and he, for the vast majority of the time, doesn’t have to see the means in which his happiness is at the cost of others - therefore the ignorance. Secondly, because he is told that by holding onto liberal ideology and making very unsacrificial efforts towards the supposed benefit of others, he is absolved from blame - the ideology.
Historically a different form of delusion was common: Firstly, unlike the modern liberal this deluded person, while doing well, did see the suffering of those around him - for example take any large city two or three hundred years ago, on the way to different parts of the city one with money usually couldn’t help but pass by people obviously deathly ill or starving with ribs showing. But, he was always told not to associate with poor people, and told they were lower forms of life and deserved their lot, so sympathy could never develop.
All wild animals must develop certain features that most people in the first world do not, but I wouldn’t say that wild animals develop emotional calluses, or at least not in the way that unsheltered people do. Maybe animals experience fear, isolation as such, but I doubt they experience sympathy. The sheltered person doesn’t necessarily avoid sympathy, but what they do avoid is the constant necessity to turn away from those for which they are sympathetic towards and look after themselves or those they already have an obligation to.
This is well written and will take a look at it Stuart, and respond to it forthwith in the near future.
However a very brief summary, philosopher that I am, the adage occurs to me:
If your are part of the problem how can you be part of the solution? But later!
Sorry, Phyllo and Obe, but there is a big difference between food, shelter, and healthcare which we need to survive and the lastest and greatest technology which we don’t. And how are non-profit builders any less capable of building a shelter than for profit ones? This is just common sense.
And your resorting to a really loose application of a false dichotomy. It generally applies when someone is arguing an either/or situation that actually involves a spectrum. For instance: the argument that unless we concede to pure Capitalism, we can only be conceding to pure socialism such as that practiced in Soviet Russia. On the other hand, there is a clear distinction between the deprivation of basic needs and making sure that people, no matter what their circumstances, have a basic level of comfort. It is the clear difference between having the luxury of being able to risk failure and living in the do or die form of Capitalism we are dealing with now.
This, for instance, is why European countries are (or were) more willing to take the risk of free trade agreements because they knew at the time that even if it did affect them, they still had a strong social support to fall back on.
And this notion that the private sphere is somehow more qualified to provide for basic needs than the public sphere is unsubstantiated nonsense. There is absolutely no proof for it outside isolated mistakes made by the public sphere. Why would a college educated public official be any less qualified to to deal with matters than a corporate CEO?
Now, I can go with you to the extent that people have survived before without shelter or healthcare. But history has pretty much established that chance being a major factor in such a circumstance, the life expectancy and level of comfort is likely to be far lower than that promised by Capitalism. The application of the false dichotomy to food is just… well, any argument for it can only come off as manipulation and always has.
What we are talking about here is a basic level of comfort which Capitalism has, time and time again, proven to be incapable of guaranteeing.
The problem with this argument is that it is usually made by people who haven’t the slightest clue about what it is to live without food, shelter, or healthcare -even though they, pumped up on Nietzsche, fancy themselves perfectly ready for it. So it becomes too easy to make such nonchalant applications of abstractions while sitting in an environmentally controlled room behind a computer.
I would also note the subtle deferral to the authority of the natural involved here in that the argument seems to be based on the erroneous notion that Capitalism, given its mimicking of natural forces, is the only only natural means by which food, shelter, and healthcare can be efficiently provided -that is when every other western industrialized nation has proven that to be an utter falsehood.
I’ll address some of your points later when I have more time.
Right now I’m a bit confused. In this system you envision, some government agency guarantees food, shelter and healthcare to everyone…right?
Is an industrial farm which supplies some of this food allowed to make a profit or is it required to sell at cost to the agency?
Ibid here: just for starters though, Sweden can afford it’s social safety net, but look at their immigration policy/enforcement,and requirements, it really is like comparing apples and oranges in social welfare. We have porous borders, conflicting and hypocritical border enforcement, and a corrupt welfare system. In addition a complicated and deceptive drug commerce via criminal enterprise.
Plus USA is burdened by a mental health/homeless crisis of unheard of proportions, and we are just getting out of a recession. The math doesn’t add up. Sweden, put forward as the ideal social service paradigm, really is no basis for comparison. The US has the world’s 4th largest world population, I believe.
And I’ll address your point right now:
Why would making a profit even be an issue?
I’m a bit confused as well.
I’m confused as to how an agency that doesn’t seek profit cannot provide a service at at a cheaper price than an agency that does:
it’s right within the logic of Capitalism,
Phyllo: you’re full of shit. You’re a moron. And I have no sympathy for you.
I would rather get kicked off of this board pointing that out to you than act like you have anything near the status I give to people I like .
Obe: you gonna fall into the prick position of acting like Capitalism is the end all of all solutions. Because I will turn on you as as well. Go ahead and ride on what seems like the pop thing to do. But I have no problem with destroying you as well.
Capitalism, given the philosophical result of it, will be the end of it all.
Fuck you, Obe!
I mean it: go fuck yourself.
You followed the popular way.
I would rather get kicked off this board(
than suck the dick of the Capitalism that supports it(
I would rather be free than a bitch…
Obe, you feel like a bitch to me now:
it’s like you’ll go where the action is.
I’m really disappointed in you right now.
But do what you gotta do brother…
Obe:
Kneel and suck the dick of Capitalism if you want to.
I just think I’m better than that.