[quote]gladiatorsteer wrote:
…[/quote]
You are a very confused young man.
[quote]orion wrote:
gladiatorsteer wrote:
Ah, so it was an abuse of government power that caused problems?
Why is that a problem caused by capitalism.
Did feudal, mercantilistic, fascist and socialist governments not do the same?
it was the abuse of government power caused by capitalist interests. govenrment is just the strong arm of the capitalists. how can you fail to see the connection.
the governments that you mentioned did do the same, although never to the extent of capitalism, and all those governments were overthrown just like capitalism will be.
I fail to see the connection because governments ruthlessly expanded their imperium long before capitalism was even a set of ideas.
Now if you argued that governments are basically violent institutions I´d agree.
It is also not true that those governments never expanded their powers like capitalist societies.
Examples are:
The Roman Empire, the unification of China, the land taking of Russia, Alexander the Great.
A lot of what you state as fact and obviously strongly believe in is just plain wrong.[/quote]
capitalism has existed before capitalism became a word. the empires that you mentioned sought to conquer land to increse the wealth of their empire.
as far as sheer numbers and brutality, modern capitalist governments far exceed past empires, its not even comparable. todays capitalists instutions commit crimes all over over the world, no corner has been left untouched. and how many nuclear bombs did those past empires drop? the disregard for the well being of the environment of modern capitalist institutions is unmatched in the history of man.
[quote]gladiatorsteer wrote:
wrong, wrong, wrong. you couldnt be more wrong. and this pretty much convinces me that you have no idea about what is going on in the world.
people do not want money to buy material things. they want money for food, medicine, housing, clothing, education, electricty, etc…everything that is need to live a dignified life. every day 25,000 people die because of poverty.
[/quote]
And what are “food, medicine, housing, clothing, education, electricty, etc” if not material things?
[quote]lixy wrote:
gladiatorsteer wrote:
how easy do you think it is for some one in poor country were they dont have money to build schools and buy books to “get an education and work harder”?
You don’t get it. Third world people are lazy bums and certainly not the victims here. If you don’t have a school in your village, it’s because you didn’t prioritize, and instead of uniting, you started fighting over who gets the last bucket of water from the well.
Poor countries are poor because of their ideology, not because of imperialism or globalization. Really! Don’t they teach you anything at school?[/quote]
This is in part true.
It should be obvious that every bribe you have to pay makes doing business more costly and therefore less likely.
It should also be obvious that noone invests in a country where private property is not respected.
This is one of the main differences between Asia and Africa which where hit equally by imperialism and colonization.
In fact the working infrastructure (material and immaterial) is largely owed to colonization.
[quote]gladiatorsteer wrote:
orion wrote:
gladiatorsteer wrote:
Ah, so it was an abuse of government power that caused problems?
Why is that a problem caused by capitalism.
Did feudal, mercantilistic, fascist and socialist governments not do the same?
it was the abuse of government power caused by capitalist interests. govenrment is just the strong arm of the capitalists. how can you fail to see the connection.
the governments that you mentioned did do the same, although never to the extent of capitalism, and all those governments were overthrown just like capitalism will be.
I fail to see the connection because governments ruthlessly expanded their imperium long before capitalism was even a set of ideas.
Now if you argued that governments are basically violent institutions I´d agree.
It is also not true that those governments never expanded their powers like capitalist societies.
Examples are:
The Roman Empire, the unification of China, the land taking of Russia, Alexander the Great.
A lot of what you state as fact and obviously strongly believe in is just plain wrong.
capitalism has existed before capitalism became a word. the empires that you mentioned sought to conquer land to increse the wealth of their empire.
as far as sheer numbers and brutality, modern capitalist governments far exceed past empires, its not even comparable. todays capitalists instutions commit crimes all over over the world, no corner has been left untouched. and how many nuclear bombs did those past empires drop? the disregard for the well being of the environment of modern capitalist institutions is unmatched in the history of man.[/quote]
So what you are basically saying that you simply call any kind of greed capitalism and therefore it must be bad?
Yes, modern governments killed more people. There are more people alive now than lived throughout Earths history combined, so numbers tend to be greater.
The Romans did not throw the bomb because they had no bomb. Otherwise their everyday cruely went far beyond what any semi-democratic institution could get away with today.
In cities that did not open the gates and had to be sieged they killed the man, enslaved women and children, they even crucified the dogs.
The disregard for the environment was exactly the same among stone age people. They killed of every major land mammal, everywhere they went, the destroyed the jungle whenever they needed farming space and for lack of fertilizer they did it again the next year at another spot.
They did as much damage as they could, while we do less than we can for our air and rivers have become less polluted in the last decades.
So whose disregard for the environment is higher?
[quote]orion wrote:
gladiatorsteer wrote:
wrong, wrong, wrong. you couldnt be more wrong. and this pretty much convinces me that you have no idea about what is going on in the world.
people do not want money to buy material things. they want money for food, medicine, housing, clothing, education, electricty, etc…everything that is need to live a dignified life. every day 25,000 people die because of poverty.
And what are “food, medicine, housing, clothing, education, electricty, etc” if not material things?[/quote]
i dont consider these things material things, i consider them things necessary to live a dignified life.
[quote]orion wrote:
And what are “food, medicine, housing, clothing, education, electricty, etc” if not material things?[/quote]
They are basic necessities.
Don’t compare collecting Porsches with scraping enough to fill your baby’s belly.
[quote]orion wrote:
gladiatorsteer wrote:
orion wrote:
gladiatorsteer wrote:
A lot of what you state as fact and obviously strongly believe in is just plain wrong.
capitalism has existed before capitalism became a word. the empires that you mentioned sought to conquer land to increse the wealth of their empire.
as far as sheer numbers and brutality, modern capitalist governments far exceed past empires, its not even comparable. todays capitalists instutions commit crimes all over over the world, no corner has been left untouched. and how many nuclear bombs did those past empires drop? the disregard for the well being of the environment of modern capitalist institutions is unmatched in the history of man.
So what you are basically saying that you simply call any kind of greed capitalism and therefore it must be bad?
Yes, modern governments killed more people. There are more people alive now than lived throughout Earths history combined, so numbers tend to be greater.
The Romans did not throw the bomb because they had no bomb. Otherwise their everyday cruely went far beyond what any semi-democratic institution could get away with today.
In cities that did not open the gates and had to be sieged they killed the man, enslaved women and children, they even crucified the dogs.
The disregard for the environment was exactly the same among stone age people. They killed of every major land mammal, everywhere they went, the destroyed the jungle whenever they needed farming space and for lack of fertilizer they did it again the next year at another spot.
They did as much damage as they could, while we do less than we can for our air and rivers have become less polluted in the last decades.
So whose disregard for the environment is higher?[/quote]
i call capitalism any action in which profit is the number one objective.
you arguments are not solid. if people in the stone age killed animals and cut down jungles it was more out of neccesity not because of financial interests.
youre argument of greater roman cruelty also does not hold water. in chile a U.S. implemented military dictatorship tortured people by electrocuting the genitals, teaching dogs how to rape women, putting rats in womens vaginas, executing men women and children. the people who carried out these crimes were trained by the united states at the school of the americas. another thing that the military dictatorship did was open up the country once again to u.s. corporations. but according to you capitalism had nothing to do with it.
[quote]orion wrote:
This is in part true.[/quote]
I really didn’t expect anyone to bite.
True. But you’re mistaking high-profile briberies for no-briberies.
Take a peek at campaign contributions in the US if you have a second.
How dare those starving bastards not respect private property? They should just let themselves die already!
Bzzz, wrong answer.
For one, Asia is much farther from the West than Africa is. Then, you seem to totally ignore the way the Asian dragons built themselves. It was certainly not by signing the GATT, but by upping their tarrifs and closing themselves up while they caught up.
Thank God for the White Man, hey?
[quote]gladiatorsteer wrote:
orion wrote:
gladiatorsteer wrote:
wrong, wrong, wrong. you couldnt be more wrong. and this pretty much convinces me that you have no idea about what is going on in the world.
people do not want money to buy material things. they want money for food, medicine, housing, clothing, education, electricty, etc…everything that is need to live a dignified life. every day 25,000 people die because of poverty.
And what are “food, medicine, housing, clothing, education, electricty, etc” if not material things?
i dont consider these things material things, i consider them things necessary to live a dignified life.[/quote]
So capitalism enabled more people to lead a dignified life than ever before in history?
[quote]lixy wrote:
orion wrote:
This is in part true.
I really didn’t expect anyone to bite.
It should be obvious that every bribe you have to pay makes doing business more costly and therefore less likely.
True. But you’re mistaking high-profile briberies for no-briberies.
Take a peek at campaign contributions in the US if you have a second.
[/quote]
Yes and they allready pay a high prize for it.
They can dare to do whatever they want.
They just won`t build a modern economy on Zulu tribe law.
Last time I checked those non-material necessities for a dignified life also roll from assembly lines.
Japan more or less copied German civil law when they realized that they had to modernize. You will find other examples if you look for them, like India though not entirely on their own free will.
They certainly saw the need to change their whole culture and they did.
[quote]
In fact the working infrastructure (material and immaterial) is largely owed to colonization.
Thank God for the White Man, hey?[/quote]
Amen.
[quote]gladiatorsteer wrote:
i call capitalism any action in which profit is the number one objective.
you arguments are not solid. if people in the stone age killed animals and cut down jungles it was more out of neccesity not because of financial interests.
youre argument of greater roman cruelty also does not hold water. in chile a U.S. implemented military dictatorship tortured people by electrocuting the genitals, teaching dogs how to rape women, putting rats in womens vaginas, executing men women and children. the people who carried out these crimes were trained by the united states at the school of the americas. another thing that the military dictatorship did was open up the country once again to u.s. corporations. but according to you capitalism had nothing to do with it. [/quote]
If capitalism is the search for profit, those hunter gatherers were capitalists.
Entrepreneurs, in the true sense of the word, for food and shelter WAS their profit. You may call that not profit but necessity, but non essential and essential material things are aquired in the same way.
Ok, the Romans had women raped by baboons, held slaves and crucified hundreds of them when there where revolts.
They killed people for fun in arenas, let Christains be mutilated and killed by wild animals.
They burned down whole cities and erased whole people from history.
Caesar killed 1/3 of all Gauls, enslaved another 1/3, took all their money and their land.
The King of Chin had all children of his enemies killed once, for fear that they might one day revenge their parents.
You compare all that to torturing and raping a few thousand people?
Last but not least, capitalism had nothing to do with these crimes, greed that overruled any other moral standards has everything to do with it.
I think we have established though that this kind of greed has been existing long before capitalism was even a word and it allways came in the cloak of the times.
The crusaders invoked religion when they plundered Jerusalem, the SU solidarity when it stomped down the rebellions in Prag and Hungary.
If todays evil greed disguises as capitalism that is just a sign of the times.
[quote]orion wrote:
Japan more or less copied German civil law when they realized that they had to modernize.[/quote]
Why are you bringing up Japan? We’re discussing the Africa and Asia that have been equally hit by imperialism and colonialism.
Japan wasn’t hit by imperialism. Heck, their head of state is called an emperor!
What’s next? Are you gonna start arguing that despite the colonialism the Native Americans suffered from, they still managed to turn their country into a great nation?
[quote]orion wrote:
gladiatorsteer wrote:
orion wrote:
gladiatorsteer wrote:
wrong, wrong, wrong. you couldnt be more wrong. and this pretty much convinces me that you have no idea about what is going on in the world.
people do not want money to buy material things. they want money for food, medicine, housing, clothing, education, electricty, etc…everything that is need to live a dignified life. every day 25,000 people die because of poverty.
And what are “food, medicine, housing, clothing, education, electricty, etc” if not material things?
i dont consider these things material things, i consider them things necessary to live a dignified life.
So capitalism enabled more people to lead a dignified life than ever before in history?[/quote]
capitalism has created great wealth but it has concentrated it in the hands of a few and it prohibits that wealth from reaching all
[quote]orion wrote:
gladiatorsteer wrote:
i call capitalism any action in which profit is the number one objective.
you arguments are not solid. if people in the stone age killed animals and cut down jungles it was more out of neccesity not because of financial interests.
youre argument of greater roman cruelty also does not hold water. in chile a U.S. implemented military dictatorship tortured people by electrocuting the genitals, teaching dogs how to rape women, putting rats in womens vaginas, executing men women and children. the people who carried out these crimes were trained by the united states at the school of the americas. another thing that the military dictatorship did was open up the country once again to u.s. corporations. but according to you capitalism had nothing to do with it.
If capitalism is the search for profit, those hunter gatherers were capitalists.
Entrepreneurs, in the true sense of the word, for food and shelter WAS their profit. You may call that not profit but necessity, but non essential and essential material things are aquired in the same way.
Ok, the Romans had women raped by baboons, held slaves and crucified hundreds of them when there where revolts.
They killed people for fun in arenas, let Christains be mutilated and killed by wild animals.
They burned down whole cities and erased whole people from history.
Caesar killed 1/3 of all Gauls, enslaved another 1/3, took all their money and their land.
The King of Chin had all children of his enemies killed once, for fear that they might one day revenge their parents.
You compare all that to torturing and raping a few thousand people?
Last but not least, capitalism had nothing to do with these crimes, greed that overruled any other moral standards has everything to do with it.
I think we have established though that this kind of greed has been existing long before capitalism was even a word and it allways came in the cloak of the times.
The crusaders invoked religion when they plundered Jerusalem, the SU solidarity when it stomped down the rebellions in Prag and Hungary.
If todays evil greed disguises as capitalism that is just a sign of the times.
[/quote]
hunters gatherers were not capitalists and i know you are smarter than that. they were hunting and gathering in order to provide for their community not to make a profit.
i agree that those conquering empires committed horrible crimes but i still say that the U.S. empire is the most vast empire that has ever existed and like i said their crimes have reached every corner of the world. they have taken the tactics used by those ruthless empires and perfected them. the u.s. bombs innocent men, women, and children, they attack people with chemicals that affect populations long after they are first used. this kind of destruction has never been seen before
greed prevails because a capitalist system rewards greed. and this is why a new system has to be established, a system which rewards cooperation
[quote]lixy wrote:
orion wrote:
Japan more or less copied German civil law when they realized that they had to modernize.
Why are you bringing up Japan? We’re discussing the Africa and Asia that have been equally hit by imperialism and colonialism.
Japan wasn’t hit by imperialism. Heck, their head of state is called an emperor!
What’s next? Are you gonna start arguing that despite the colonialism the Native Americans suffered from, they still managed to turn their country into a great nation?[/quote]
Because Japan understood that an immaterial framework is needed to copy the wests material success.
They copied it, they were successful.
EVERY nation that copied it was successful.
Those that did not, weren`t.
So argument that it has nothing to do with a immaterial frame work but long past atrocities is wrong.
What is interesting is that you use western ideas, western mores and western technology to critisize the west.
[quote]gladiatorsteer wrote:
orion wrote:
gladiatorsteer wrote:
orion wrote:
gladiatorsteer wrote:
wrong, wrong, wrong. you couldnt be more wrong. and this pretty much convinces me that you have no idea about what is going on in the world.
people do not want money to buy material things. they want money for food, medicine, housing, clothing, education, electricty, etc…everything that is need to live a dignified life. every day 25,000 people die because of poverty.
And what are “food, medicine, housing, clothing, education, electricty, etc” if not material things?
i dont consider these things material things, i consider them things necessary to live a dignified life.
So capitalism enabled more people to lead a dignified life than ever before in history?
capitalism has created great wealth but it has concentrated it in the hands of a few and it prohibits that wealth from reaching all[/quote]
That does not answer my question.
Unequal distribution is the norm in human history, todays livng standards are the surprising news.
Enabled by an enormous increase in productivity, the natural consequence of a system that rewards the constant building of capital.
[quote]gladiatorsteer wrote:
hunters gatherers were not capitalists and i know you are smarter than that. they were hunting and gathering in order to provide for their community not to make a profit.
[/quote]
You are constantly changing the meaning of the word profit to suit your needs that is all.
prof·it (pr�?f’Ät) Pronunciation Key
n.
- An advantageous gain or return; benefit.
- The return received on a business undertaking after all operating expenses have been met.
-
- The return received on an investment after all charges have been paid. Often used in the plural.
- The rate of increase in the net worth of a business enterprise in a given accounting period.
- Income received from investments or property.
- The amount received for a commodity or service in excess of the original cost.
They invested in spears ,bows and arrows to hunt more efficiently.
These hunting tools are in no way different from a computer or truck, they were capital that made the “production” of consumer goods easier and they benefitted from it because the increase in efficiency was greater than the work that went into bow construction.
A classical case of capitalism and profit.
Profit is profit is profit.
Period.
true
[quote]
greed prevails because a capitalist system rewards greed. and this is why a new system has to be established, a system which rewards cooperation[/quote]
A buyer and a seller must co-operate, allways. So capitalism is a system that rewards co-operation. When was the last time someone forced you to buy, rent or lease anything you did not want?
Seems like those evil co-operation cannot force you to do anything.
[quote]lixy wrote:
Look, Morocco and Tunisia were conquered. There is no other way to put it. It required neither overwhelming destructive force nor leveling the place. Bush’s speeches nowadays replicate perfectly those of the French in the early 20th century.[/quote]
or those of the Moroccans in the 7th century.
[quote]gladiatorsteer wrote:
i still say that the U.S. empire is the most vast empire that has ever existed /quote]
Worse than the Soviet Union?
If the US is an empire, how many colonies do we have and where are they?