Philosophy Now Forum

Once I read a UN report that calculated the % of resources and man-hours spent on non-productive activities. It was estimating up to 90%. This non-productive work fell in three categories: Money-related activities/resources: planning, printing, distributing, destroying, banking, guarding, handling, ...

You have two basically different options for social organization. One is based on the concept of co-operation, the other is based on the concept of competition. The smallest social organization is the family and, in ideal situation, there is no competition, only co-operation. You don’t usually count...

Skip wrote:Easy for you! I'm up against the intellectual colossus, Glenn Beck and the FUX chorus!
I know when I'm outgunned.

You see why I gave up on gary?

You can't argue with his list of authors -- it is self-incriminating.

You should know by now that people like me don't believe in moral rights. It was legal in Nazi Germany to arrest Jews and confiscate their property. It was legal during WW2 to do the same to Japanese Americans. It was legal during American expansion to the west to drive the Indians off their lands ...

400 years will do, as far as the US is concerned - and I want the "we all" that came from Africa sorted by voluntary and involuntary immigrants. It's not an event I'm talking about; it's a history that has not yet ended. My blame game. Cute, but crap. That's convenient. What if I want to ...

I thought you were writing a physics book. I am. I don't even look at the forum until the evening, after I have done my enjoyable thinking. You want wealth spread out and past wrongs righted. I don't want anything of the kind. I made one suggestion in the "Proposal for a new social contract&qu...

I used to be an Ayn Rand disciple, in my youth, when I was a lot more ignorant and a lot more naïve than I am now. Her attempt to deduce her social philosophy from basic principles appealed to my theoretical physicist mind. What she did not realize is that any system (not just pure Capitalism) would...

Skip wrote:Thanx a bunch!

Okay, but it's going to be a short version.

I apologize again, Skip, and I thank you for the brilliant and incisive analysis.

No way I could have done it this concisely.

OK, back to quantum physics...it is a LOT more fun!!!

We would have to discuss books we both read on the subject, before anything else. John Kenneth Gabraith? Noam Chomsky? Naomi Klein? Linda McQuaig? Gwynne Dyer? John Ralston Saul? Richard Hofstadter? Radley Balko? Jonathan D. Simon? Jacque Fresco? Barbara Kingsolver? David Korten? John Casti? Rebecc...

The simplest things The simple things are, by far, the hardest to see: we’d rather drown in complications; when we could just simply, happily, be, we choose to suffer in self-created abominations. We invent ideologies, wars, financial meltdowns when all we need to do is: produce, distribute and con...

PS. Skip, I am sorry for bowing out of this discussion, but I need to concentrate on writing the second volume of my Physics book and I find the forum quite distracting. It is very challenging to explain quantum physics, without using advanced mathematics, so I really need to immerse myself in the s...

I agree that there are millions in foreign lands who are living in abject poverty. I would dare say they are victims of the laws of nature and the leadership (or lack thereof) of their societies, not of capitalism. The laws of nature? Like - South Africa was just unfortunate in its inhospitable cli...

your misconception about Capitalism seems to be quite staggering (for me anyway). As I sit here on my back porch, I am watching my neighbors go about their daily business. No abject poverty there. I expand my view (mentally) out about 15 miles to the surrounding lands and town to the west. No abjec...

Ned, you and I are more alike than we are different. It's not about you and I, gary. It is about capitalism. We would have to discuss books we both read on the subject, before anything else. Have you read John Kenneth Gabraith? Noam Chomsky? Naomi Klein? Linda McQuaig? Gwynne Dyer? John Ralston Sau...

I am not a victim (only indirectly), I don't want more money, no I couldn't sell off 45 acres, it is out in the country, unsuitable for anything else other than be there (covered with rocks and bush), I am too old (72) to travel to Africa and I have done my share of helping the poor all my life. I a...