- Capitalism and Alternatives -

Top Deck

Posted by: Gee ( si ) on August 09, 1999 at 14:41:59:

In Reply to: Top Stuff, sir. posted by Red Deathy on August 09, 1999 at 13:03:49:

: No, it effects your life, what they do and how they do it (what if they used poisonous or substandard ingredients and you didn't know?).

They are innocent until proven guilty. Many murders are commited with DIY tools every year. I cannot hold them off from buying or making tools in fear of being assualted by one no more than I could hold off ice cream makers from producing ice creams as they choose to for fear that one of them might be poisonous.

: No, it is utterly definitive, because it is left to their own rational conciousness to decide such matters, utter responsibility,

The consequence of any lack of responsibility in making a claim would be the burden of all others, the claimant could waste and make misery whilst 'sharing' the consequence with all others.

: Why should people hold back? unless they actually want to, and unless their needs require them to hold back and get less.

Save up metals and concrete for the making of a bridge - ruined by endless claims for metal and concrete modern art or garden statues. the people who intend to make the bridge have their productive effort curtailed because metal and concrete are being allocated to the useless. you complain of this in capitalism - the same is just as possible in socialism.

: No, its not, because I don't think, unlike yourself, that power and glory are removed from material determination, specifically that without reward and material gain for such positions, no one would have any incentive to get together and try and dominate.

It is the power that gets them the material benefits of being in charge - which is to say, to control the use of 'collective' resource.

: No, its not objective, or rather, it cannot be known objectively, so by definition objectivity does not enter rationally into human discourse, and it becomes irrational to seek an objective denotative utterance.

There is a huge philosophical gulf between saying gravity is not obvjectively real, and saying that we humans cannot 'know' it in an objective sense, being subject. A person incapable of knowing gravity at all is not floating. A person unable to see a brick flying toward him suffers the same consequence as one who has understood every law of physics and medical science thus far known to man and made very accurate predictions about the consequences. To undertake the latter excercise is rational - its testable and observable - the rationality of the thought is borne out by what is. To say its all subjective and (if consistent) predict random or no events is borne out as wrong by reality.

: But impossible to determine specifically, and individually, and thus becomes abstraction and thus subjective in extremis.

Not if you call 'live' a standard (even if its a reductionist as reading a few medical measures) and in accepting indivual differences name a set of criteria suitable for the vast majority of mankind and leave room to consider unusual cases (very sick folk etc) by theirnown characteristics.

To leave it to whim is to say that a man who needs a yacht is as deserving as the man who needs water.

: An egg and a slivce of meat contain the same nutritional value (imagine) which do we chose?

You accept the objective standard of 'need' being filled in this case with a nutritional measure.

: To lack objective standards is not to lack a hierarchy of value, but to accept that such hierarchies are themselves human products, and thus subjective, and thus the product of discourse and debate.

Imagine now that an egg is superior nutrition by measures of nutition required by a human to be alive. Debating it does not change the nature of the egg, nor the nature of mankind.

: Thats fair enough, if they doesn't want to make toys thats their call.

Now take it a stage further. he doesnt want to make toys for person A but does want to make them for person B.

: Democracy is not about determining right or wrong, but about dertimining wants, what people desire, democracy is about values.

And with that you accept the many evils that might be 'wanted' by poeple, or less dramatically the many second rate generators that might be selected on the basis of producer popularity etc. Even that a great many people might want to keep property privately.

: No, I'm simply stating a simple matter of possibility, they could try eat that much peanut butter, but they'd be sick- I'm just sure they can't do it.

by considering the nature of mankind you have reasoned that he cannot eat that much. It is objectively demonstrable (by a 'blaaaargh' sound) and the standard is reality.

: The fact that the vast majority won't let them, and they won't want to because of their cultural leanings and the laack of perceptable gain.

fact? Hope.

: Then if they seemed OK I'm in teh clear, but if they came in roaring drunk and I sold them a car- intent is not an issue, I just have to show reasonable care.

So selling cigarettes to poeple who enjoy smoking and are willing to take the consequences (which for 30 years have been well understood and massively publicised) is fine.

: It is very difficult, and as they say, tehre is no such thing as an ex addict- its made more difficult by a culture of smoking (i.e. all your friends do), and with an advertising industry encouraging it.

Then its difficult. Still up to you.


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