this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2023
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I also needed to split this up, so this is part 1.
I find such forums to usually be low quality, but that's just my opinion.
While true, that doesn't change anything. Corporations can still be monopolies while being legal if the law is insufficient to prevent natural monopolies.
Corporations are organizations of people. But regardless of what you define them as, people or organizations, you cannot have freedom if corporations control everything. Just as a dictator (person) prevents freedom, so too can companies (people).
You can definitely do that but your chances of success are not high.
And those stories have the same chances of winning the lottery. Sure people win the lottery all the time, but that doesn't mean everyone will.
I'm not pretending it's impossible. I am stating the fact that it is unreasonable for everybody to just create a new business and live in la la land. Sometimes fantasies come true, but they don't always.
I am using hyperbole. I am not stating that what we experience in America is literal chattel slavery. The point is that you can't just move to a different job to escape abuse when basically all american jobs are abusive. You can't just have freedom against buying from walmart when walmart is the only store within a 4hr drive. Does that clarify where I am coming from better?
I am talking about how jobs control when you work, how you work, what you say, what you do. They control the law, politicians, what we buy, how we buy it. They control the media and therefore the narrative. Corporations have such an immense control over american life. We are not ranked number one in the world freedom index for a reason, we aren't actually even in the top 10. The top 10 is mostly comprised of European countries.
And I'm not going to address the "real job" part because that is a true scottsman fallacy waiting to happen. I will tell you this, I have never read Marx, I do not label myself a marxists, and I have had several jobs over the years at this point.
Ok, then I take back what I said when I though you were referencing Robinson v California/punishing drug addicts for being drug addicts. I should have clarified which decision you meant first. I think we already know where we both stand on religion in schools, so I will move on.
Secularism is what allows us to have the freedom to choose a religion. It is the wall between church and state that prevents religion from destroying people's freedoms, and it is what prevents the government from imposing on religions. It is one of the core founding principles of our country as evidenced by the first amendment establishment clause, and everything the founding fathers have said about the nature of the state/church.
The purpose of american freedom is for the sake of freedom itself. No part of the constitution mentions god or worship. And the only mention of religion states that congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.
Reply to "just my opinion", Part 2 of 2:
My proverbial fresh fruit vendor mentions to me that he's struggling to keep up with demand, so I tell him I can help him sell his fruit, and I'll do it for a 15% commission. He bargains me down to 10%, and we have an agreement. He tells me which hours he's open and I tell him I sell his fruit 24/7. After a few months, he tells me I should wear a more professional looking shirt, and I reply that his sales are up 30% MoM with me running sales, but if he really wants to control my wardrobe I'll go sell for the competing fruit stand over there. How's exactly am I being controlled? I'm not; I'm in control of my own labor, selling it at an agreeable rate.
You also mentioned that corporations control politicians. To the degree that's true, it's only because our government is so bloated that corporations are incentivized to do so. If we could stick to the 10th Amendment and return the government to its proper 18th Century size, there'd be nothing for lobbyists to do. The federal government should be responsible for almost nothing. It should be tiny. That's the root of the problem you blame on corporations. Meanwhile, every leftist continues to push for a bigger and bigger government.
I'm not sure what the "world freedom index" is, but according to the 2023 Index of Economic Freedom, the US ranks 25 with the following advice:
When I say "secularism", I'm referring to the social trend of reduced church membership, and the growing trend of people to openly embrace atheism and agnosticism without a hint of shame. Every one of us is either with God or with Satan, and so by secularism I mean the trend of people abandoning God to embrace Satan.
Which is to say, we can really talk past each other sometimes.
What a libertine and hedonistic notion of freedom. It has no basis in history, our culture, or reality, all of which are essentially Christian.
Our culture's founding document is built upon a theological proposition:
Our entire culture is built upon that, a theological proposition.
And if you read all of the old American documents, almost all of them include copious quotes from the Bible, which you probably don't even recognize if you're an atheist. Christianity runs through every fiber of our being as a nation. God is our purpose for being, our purpose for living, and our purpose for freedom. That would not have been a contentious assertion in the past.
Corporations are always incentivized to do so regardless of government size. If you're a corporation and you have the power to get politicians to get a law passed, then the law gets passed even if the fed is tiny.
The root problem is lobbying (bribery) being legal. Without it we would be in a far better place.
I think the issue of government size is more nuanced than that. There are things that republicans want that would make the government bigger, and there are things that democrats/leftists want that would make it smaller.
There is definitely some regulation that needs to be abandoned, certain zoning laws immediately come to mind, but the largest reason why we have so little freedom here in comparison is because of government surveillance programs, corporate control, etc.
And ranking freedom solely on economic freedom is not a good methodology.
I don't want to make this a debate over definition, but that isn't anywhere close to the definition of secularism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secularism
Atheism and agnosticism is not something to be ashamed about. People should only believe things in which their is sufficient evidence for, and there is insufficient evidence for religion. And atheism is not an embrace of Satan, we atheists don't believe in Satan either.
I'll refer you to my other post that had quotes from the founding fathers explicitly stating that the U.S. was not founded as a christian nation.
The delcaration of independence is not a legal document or part of american law. Only the constitution is the head of american law and it doesn't say anything about a creator, chrisitianity, etc.
I've spent the better part of two decades debating with christians online in various forums, so I have read quite a lot of it at this point.
Reply to "regardless of government size", part 2 of 2:
I was all ready to reply that the wiki article has been biased by secularists, but then I read it (well, I skimmed the beginning of it), and it seems largely agreeable, and supports my personal definition. The social trend of reduced church membership, and the growing trend of people to openly embrace atheism and agnosticism without a hint of shame, are both completely in line with people "seeking to conduct human affairs based on naturalistic considerations, uninvolved with religion." The article also notes that:
That's awkward wording, but does indeed agree with my personal definition.
I know you believe Satan doesn't exist. You're in complete denial of the massive influence he has over you.
You're either with God or you're against Him. That's a really important concept that you seem to keep ignoring. When you reject God, you embrace Satan — even if you're unaware that you're doing so — and even if you think that's impossible — that's what you're doing. And that most certainly is something to be ashamed about.
As for evidence, once you accept Christ, you will finally understand that abundant evidence is everywhere you look.
…which I rebutted. I wonder if you're missing some of my replies. (Edit: maybe I rebutted it after you wrote this.)
It's the primary document to establish our culture and our national identity. I can't overemphasize that point. When was the last time you read it?
Do you suppose your motivation to do that was provided by God or Satan? ("Neither" would be an invalid answer.)
I don't think they match, but again definitions aren't really why I am here, so I will move on.
When you say "complete denial", do you mean the kind of denial of that secretly knows some unfortunate truth, or literally denying? Because if it is the former you are mistaken.
That's because I don't think it makes sense. I don't believe in either of the sides you are talking about. So it's kind of like asking "are you rooting for team A or team B", but the sports teams* that you're talking about are all fictional. It just doesn't make sense for me to say I am on a sports team that I think is made up.
* I know they aren't sports teams, but I couldn't think of a better analogy.
I'm embracing neither. I can't embrace something I don't believe in.
I know you don't think I was ever a christian, but when I was, I thought I had abundant evidence. But the closer I looked at my reasons for believing the more I realized they weren't good reasons.
I think trying to single out a single document that defines a 246 year old country is a mistake, because no such document could possibly define such a long and chaotic history/country.
This question is not relevant to the conversation, as it is just setting up for an ad hominem fallacy.
I'm sorry but the answer is "neither" whether you consider it valid or not. I am not a christian and therefore not bound to "christian logic" so to speak that would say that such a dichotomy is valid. My motivations are my own to the extent that an american can.
Definitions are so important! Oftentimes we talk past each other, thinking we're arguing when we actually agree on 95% of the issue, but we're using different working definitions of our words, and misinterpreting each other accordingly.
I have no background in psychology, but I don't think denial necessarily involves secret knowledge. I just went to research the topic, and quickly remembered that I dislike the entire field of psychology, so I didn't get far. Sorry. But no, I don't pretend to know what you really know and what you don't. That's between you and God, not me. I just think you've intentionally decided to refute God, and thereby unknowingly invited Satan to guide your thoughts.
That's a good analogy, and I understand your perspective. But the problem is that good and evil are entirely real, and it's absurd to pretend they're not. You're ignoring the spiritual warfare that underlies everything happening in our world, in our lives, and indeed in this very conversation. You're denying the foundational tenets of Western Civilization, based on millennia of correspondence with and guidance from the Lord our God. You arrogantly pretending you're somehow smarter than our ancestors who built this civilization with God's blessing, and what's far worse is you're arrogantly pretending you're somehow smarter than God Almighty Himself. That's why I say you're in denial. God does not like to be denied. But the Devil does, and seizes upon that denial to manipulate you.
—Verbal Kint
But you can, and you do. When you deny God, you embrace Satan. There is no third option.
I find that completely believable. You predicated your faith on faulty reasoning, and as a result, your faith was unstable. Solid faith cannot be predicated on reasons at all — that's what makes it faith. But when your faith is solid, you're then provided with the ability to see the abundant evidence for what it truly is. The key is that the evidence comes second, contingent on faith.
I'd say that's reasonable if I wasn't familiar with the US. But every child memorizes key lines from that single document, and learns all about how it made us the greatest country on earth. And every American refers back to it in common parlance, while discussing and debating a wide variety of issues. And that single document continues to influence all of our legislation and jurisprudence. So in the case of the US, that single document really does define our culture.
It's worth noting, though, that you mention that we're a 246 year old country, and it's 247 (welcome to 2023!), but more importantly I'd say most of what happened during those intervening years are far less important than what happened at the outset. Even if our state and federal governments were to topple, and a foreign army was to invade, American flags would still fly because our national character was established at the outset of our founding, and it cannot be destroyed.
Out of curiosity, if it wouldn't be invasive, which state are you in (or from, or most familiar with)?
Definitions are also defined by the way in which the majority of people use them. The word "yeet" was utter nonsense until enough people understood the word and its meaning to land itself a spot in dictionaries.
So I hesitate to argue over definitions, because there is an "objective" answer so to speak, and from what I can tell you seem to use completely different definitions from the norm. So I don't see much point in talking about it.
I hate to repeat myself but this goes pretty close along the lines of what I said in one of the other threads, and that is that beliefs as I understand them are not a choice. So it simply doesn't make sense to say somebody has intentionally decided to refute god. Just as I cannot choose to become christian, you cannot choose to become muslim. We can choose what ideas we are exposed to and that can have an effect on us, but it is indirect at most.
I know a lot of christians understand god to be good itself and satan to be the opposite, but that's not really how I see it. Sure, good and evil exist but they are human concepts, human labels that we ascribe to actions. They aren't literal entities that exist. I am not pretending good and evil don't exist. They exist just as much as friendship does. It isn't anything physical or some being, it's a human label.
So be it. If there are problems with the foundation of western civilization then there ought to be changes to fix the problems. There used to be a time when western civilization permitted slavery (and technically still does), so why would I treat it as perfect?
Humans stand on the shoulders of our ancestors through our ability to transfer knowledge from one generation to the next. Couple that with our ability to analyze history and hind sight, and it's very easy to discover flaws of the past. I am not saying or pretending I am smarter than previous generations because you don't need to be to discover such flaws. To put it in an analogy, I play chess a lot and have a friend who is significantly smarter than me at it. He beats me basically every time. However, when he makes a mistake in the game I still have (on occasion) the ability to discover it, and very occasionally beat him. Yet I never say or pretend I am smarter than him.
I can't say I am smarter than something I don't believe exists.
The third option is that these beings simply do not exist.
And therefore I want none of it.
Too much has happened in our country for that to be true.
Whoops! I should have paid slightly more attention to my google search result.
I'd rather not say at the risk of doxing myself, but I'll say I am from the north east coast.
If you ask a hundred people for the definition of any word, you'll get a hundred different definitions. Sure they'll be similar, but no two will likely be identical. Usually we assume similar is good enough. But when we disagree over a contentious topic, it can help to define our terms because they may be radically dissimilar.
For many such terms, the political Right and Left will both use their own flavor of definitions which are quite different from the other side's. I suspect that's what you're observing when you say my definitions are different from the norm. It's all too easy to think we disagree when in fact we mostly agree but are defining words differently.
I chose to become a Christian. Nobody found me and convinced me. I sought it out, learned about it, read the Bible, and accepted Jesus. It was totally a choice. And what's more, I'd say I repeatedly choose to be a Christian every time I struggle, every time my faith is tested, and every time I slip and sin. I turn to Christ and ask for forgiveness, again and again, and every time I choose to be Christian. Of course it's a choice, and you choose too.
Yes, they are human concepts, and yes these two concepts are distinct from the literal entities of God and Satan. But where do you think the two human concepts came from? Adam and Eve had to reflect on their expulsion, and conceive of concepts to describe the situation. So we all do, as we go through life. Just as the word "photosynthesis" describes a human concept which describes a real phenomenon, so true good and evil are predicated on our experiences contending with literal entities.
I give you credit for at least admitting it. So often it seems like leftists are following a program to destroy western civilization, but I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've witnessed an admission of your willingness to do so.
Listen, our politics are different, reflecting our different personal values, experiences, and understandings of the world. As a conservative, my raison d'être is to preserve Western Civilization (AKA Christendom). In all of our messages, most (all?) of what I've written comes down to that. To my view, it's crucial and nonnegotiable. Everything we have of any value at all comes from Western Civilization. It's destruction can result in nothing more than the fulfillment of end-times prophecy.
I understand your perspective. But I also know we frequently think the past is flawed just because we don't understand it. Similar to how teens believe they know so much more than their parents, only to realize years later that they were wrong about pretty much everything.
Why do you suppose ancient people were overall more religious than people today? When we look up at night, we see light pollution. Most of us have no clue what our own sky looks like. When we look out of our windows, most of us see buildings, cement, infrastructure, people, vehicles, and maybe a few landscaped trees and lawns. Most of us have no clue what our planet naturally looks like. Maybe we visit a national park and snap a few photos for Instagram just to prove we were there.
Ancient peoples saw God's handiwork everywhere they looked, and it was breathtakingly jaw-dropping and truly awesome. We live in a world where we've built all of these things to constantly blind us from that. We have absolutely no idea, on average, what our own world looks like. Plato's Allegory of the Cave is what we've built all around ourselves. Our only hope of knowing truth is to look to God, and read His wisdom and knowledge passed down to us from the ancients: the Bible.
If you see a mistake, it's probable you're evaluating an illusion.
You're fortunate to have a chess partner. I haven't had one in ages. I miss playing it.
Potentially, but at least in this case I believe the difference was over the word "secularists/secularism", and usually the best people able to define a group are those that are within the group. A christian is generally more qualified and familiar with the definition of "christian", and the same applies to secularists.
That part was a choice, but that is not the totality of the process of coming to believe something. Everything after that was to my understanding not a choice.
Humans are social creatures by nature, and a part of that socialization is language. There was a need to describe actions that helped and hurt people, so the words good and evil came about. Or at least some version did, and then as each language evolved from some predecessor, it eventually turned into what it is today.
So it seems we are in agreement that "good" and "evil" exist at least in the form of concepts, so do you still hold to what you said earlier:
I think you are exaggerating what I said. If the foundation of your house is infested with termites, the correct thing to do is to fix the problem. There are a million different ways to do so, but you have jumped to "burn the house down" as the solution where I have not suggested it. In my opinion the solution it so determine if the foundation is salvageable, if it is, then it is time to bring in an exterminator to deal with the pressing issue, and then to replace any beams that have gone too far. If instead the problem is not salvageable it is instead time to build a new, better house, and then move into it once it is ready. At no point should the house be burned down with people inside of it like you seem to think I am suggesting. I think civilization should still exist, and would very much prefer that.
Because humans are intensely uncomfortable not having the answers to things, so they try to explain the unknown through any means possible, including through incorrect answers. Nowadays we have an explanation for lightning, so nobody blames Zeus anymore.
The space of unknown things in which god resides shrinks more and more the longer we study the universe. And that's a big part of why more and more people are less and less religious.
I agree completely. If I had it my way, there would be significant changes to our infrastructure to reduce the light pollution, regular pollution and to add more green to our cities. Unfortunately this isn't a game of sim city. This is a big topic, so if you are interested, I'll leave you with this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOc8ASeHYNw
Given that you believe the only source of truth is the christian god, how do you contend with science, a process that never turns to the bible or invokes the name of god?
That's a very broad generalization.
I have two friends whom I regularly play with, usually daily-timed games, and then another two of complete randoms. I usually have an ELO of about 1100, but have been sitting around 1050 for a bit just because I haven't had much ability to concentrate this last year or so. Our of curiosity, what's your ELO if you have one?
Most of our ongoing disagreements are predicated an underlying problem that's eloquently explained in Tucker Carlson's interview of Vivek Ramaswamy starting at 33:53 and going through the end of the video, so ~11 minutes long. I'm curious to hear your perspective on that.
I see why you say that, but Christians are entitled to a word describing the phenomenon of declining Christianity, and the word "secularism" has been used for decades if not centuries to describe that. If you're aware of a more appropriate word, I'm all ears.
Again, I make the choice to be a Christian on an ongoing basis. Every time I look to Christ for guidance, every time I follow Christ, every time I repent, etc., is a choice. I choose to be a Christian repeatedly every single day. The Devil continually tempts me to stray, and every time I choose God. It's a choice, through and through.
The foundation of Western civilization is not, and cannot, be infested with termites, because the foundation of Western civilization is the Lord our God. There's nothing you can say to legitimately criticize God. God is not a problem to be fixed. So I'm sorry if I twisted your "try to salvage the house, or replace it if necessary" with "burn the house down", but no house could possibly be better (in any way) than the house of the Lord our God. Your entire line of thinking is rooted in your denial of God, which is the sin of sins.
I don't know if anyone ever actually believed in Zeus, but the concept is 100% incomparable to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who is real and present today as He ever was. God doesn't exist to provide answers to mysteries. We exist because He exists. If we don't know how something works, of course we can ascribe the answer to God, and that answer is always correct. What's crucial to understand is that it remains correct once science discovers the method by which God works. Lightning is a great example. It's created by God to work in a certain way, and we've deduced the mechanism by which it happens.
If you're right that some people only see God as a useful crutch to blame things on, then that's reasonable. But it misses the vast all-encompassing nature of God's glory, so it doesn't seem like a very compelling answer.
The most intelligent scientists all believe in God. Einstein is the most notable example. Science is the practice of using our God-given abilities to observe and describe the mechanisms of God's creation. Science is in every way predicated upon God.
I don't. Back when I played regularly, I didn't care about such formalities. I would now if I picked it back up.
Ramaswamy's response to the pansexual women is about as out of touch as one can get. Him saying that the LGBTQ+ is a bunch of groups is just a thinly veiled effort to weaken the power of the LGBTQ+ through propoganda. He wants to act like republicans are the victims when the LGBTQ+ receive death threats and attacks on a routine basis. He also just straight up doesn't understand much about the LGBTQ+. Basically the whole thing he uses nonstop strawman fallacies. He has a fundamental lack of understanding of everything he criticized through the whole thing. And in the end it's culture war bullshit.
"The decline of christianity"
Even if we have free will that isn't an instance of you changing your mind of your own free will. These things you list are just examples of you performing actions that are in line with your beliefs.
I disagree that the foundation of western civ is solely placed on god. There are a lot more things that go into it than that:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Western_civilization
If you're going to look through this, I recommend spending extra time on the section explaining the enlightenment.
Sure I can, god, according to your worldview, created a world in which children get cancer. I can conceptualize a world in which that does not happen, and therefore a failure of god. And before you say I think I know better than god, in reality I know better than the humans who made god up.
That's a terrible thing to do because it is a form of lying to yourself. In the end it wasn't Zeus who causes lightning, it is a build up of a difference in energy between clouds and the ground. Answering "god" in that context was wrong. We shouldn't just blame a mystery on a bigger mystery.
No part of the explanation for how lightning works involves god.
People prefer real answers rather than ones that just blame a bigger mystery.
Not only is that not true (because you added the "most intelligent" qualifier), but given that scientific literacy is correlated with atheism, I find it to be rather damning for religion:
https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2009/11/Scientists-and-Belief-1.gif
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2009/11/05/scientists-and-belief/
If god really is the answer for everything all around us we would expect those who understand the universe better than the average population to understand god better than the average population. Yet we see the opposite.
He was a really weird deist, not a christian. And he was from a time when it was far less socially acceptable to be an atheist. So that's not really much of an argument.
Go for it! It's pretty easy to play against others nowadays now that there are so many popular chess sites. chess.com and lichess are pretty decent.
I wasn't referring to that in particular. I was referring to the big-picture point he made in the whole last 11 minutes of the video. The point was about western civilization, the insidious project to undermine it, and our duty to defend it. That point is foundational to much of our disagreement. It sounds like you stopped watching before he even got to the point.
Yeah, but that misses the bigger picture. It's not as if people are rejecting Christ and converting to Judaism. Rather it's a secular movement driven by Satan's success at convincing a vast swath of the populace that God is imaginary.
This is one of those ways in which Wikipedia tends to be secular. It says in the intro that Western civilization is "linked" to Christiandom. That's misleading. Western civilization is Christiandom. The only difference is we don't call it that anymore. But everything that followed from Christiandom is built upon Christiandom as an extension of Christiandom. Though to the article's credit, it does later state that:
That's close to accurate. In truth the two are inseparably identical, which is why Satan hates Western civilization, that that in turn is why you've been convinced to believe you want to contribute to the project of undermining Western civilization.
I'm not sure exactly what points you're referring to here. Skimming through it, I'm pretty sure I already know all of these details. The only change I'd make is to emphasize God's role in all of these things, and His importance to all of these historical figures.
It is the height of hubris to criticize God. His wisdom is infinite, and if yours was too then you'd understand why certain children are given cancer. It's not for us to try to understand. It's for us to accept in our worship and prayer.
At some point, immanently I hope, you'll realize how absurdly wrong you are about this. You have demons whispering lies into your ears, and you believe them unquestioningly. I know they make it feel good when you believe them, but they're lying to you.
Comparing Zeus to God is far worse than apples and oranges, because at least apples and oranges are both fruits. It's like comparing icebergs to smartphones. They have absolutely nothing whatsoever in common, to the point that it's nonsensical to even try to compare them.
Let's say you were to throw a basketball, and make a basket. Some scientists observe it, and say "That's interesting. Let's figure out what that's all about." So they observe you throwing the basketball. They measure your movements, the wind movements, the ball's PSI, the height of the basket, the material compositions of the ball and basket, just all of it. And then they formulate a theory which postulates how the ball goes through the basket. And then people start to deny that you exist because they have the theory of how the basketball goes through the basket. The whole idea is absolutely ridiculous. God is in control, no matter what your demons tell you.
First off, it's self-evidently true, as anyone who denies God cannot be said to be very intelligent. I'm trying to word that so as not to offend you, and it's hard. Sorry. My point here is not to insult you, but just to explain my statement about the most intelligent scientists.
Secondly, the scientific disciplines are certainly attractive to atheists who want to devote their lives to pretending that they're disproving God by collecting the evidence of the basketball. So yes, atheists are more likely to become scientists than pastors. We don't need to consult any studies to know that's true.
Maybe eventually, but not today. I have too much else on my plate. But thank you for letting me know it's easy to play online. That's something I hadn't considered.
I am aware that isn't the focus that you had in mind, but it was one of the bigger reactions I had to it. My overall view is that he is deeply out of touch and incapable of using anything other than a strawman argument. He fundamentally does not understand what he is criticizing.
That's not what "The decline in chrstianity" describes.
That's just not happening.
No it's not. Western civ is a pretty arbitrary phrase that is used in a million different ways, and christianity is only a subset of that. Words and phrases change over time, and this is one of those things that has changed.
There is no such project, at least how I define western civilization.
If you're aware of all the details then you should also be aware that the enlightment (a huge part of western civilization) was the birth of science, the scientific method, and secularism. Meaning christendom != western civ.
I am criticizing a fictional, human made character. As a result of being human made, there is no such infinite wisdom.
There is no good reason.
How have you determined that you aren't worshiping an evil god if you haven't questioned god? How do you know that it isn't the case that both god and satan are evil?
Nobody is whispering anything in my ears, metephorically or literally, whichever way you mean. And I question everything before I believe it.
Both Yahweh and Zeus are fictional characters which people irrationally use to explain why things work. That was the basis for my comparison and therefore makes it a valid comparison.
That's not really how that works.
That's not true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity_and_intelligence
That is absolutely not why people do science. They do so because they want to learn more about the universe, do some good for humanity and advance it. Do you even know a single scientist?
Imagine for once that you are completely wrong about this belief of yours. Yes, it's the height of hubris. If we know nothing else, we know at very least that our Creator lives.
Psalm 100:5:
To choose just one of many possible answers.
I mean literally. You may look at your shoulder, expecting to see no demon, while maybe picturing the cutesy BSD mascot, and sure enough you don't see one sitting on your shoulder. "See?" you reassure yourself, "no demon." You then recall that you've never seen the BSD mascot running around anywhere IRL, and conclude that demons must not exist.
How sure are you that you do a good job questioning everything before you believe it? Is it possible that you've made an error?
Demons do not look like cutesy cartoon characters, and indeed they're not visible to the human eye (at least not to mine). As with all extant spiritual entities, we can know they exist despite our inability to see them.
Are you just as quick to deny that dark matter exists?
You said you were willing to question your beliefs, so I urge you to question this. I think it underlies the rift between us.
You want to see yourself as a reasonably intelligent person, and you want to cling to a state of mind which you believe to be shared by other intelligent people.
But I ask you, are you so sure that it's intelligent to reject God? Consider the following:
According to Pew, actively religious people tend to be far happier. Is it intelligent to want to be happy? Could this effect possibly be a quantitative measurement of God's blessings? And is it intelligent to want to be happy?
Again, I ask you: is it intelligent to want to be happy?
So you just don't question whether or not god is good or evil, have I understood correctly? If so, then you have no method of determining if you are worshiping an evil being. That should immediately alarm you if you have any goodness in you.
Like I said earlier, whichever way you mean, nobody is whispering anything in my ears.
It highly depends on the matter at hand. The ridiculousness of a claim is tied to how much I look into something before believing it. If my friend tells me they got a new dog, I'll probably believe them simply because my trust in them is sufficient for an ubiquitous claim such as that. If they tell me they bought a ferrari, I'd be a little more inquisitive and ask for pictures. If they tell me they bought a dragon, nothing short of seeing it in person will convince me because my understanding of the world is such that dragons do not exist. For a claim as ridiculous as that I would need very strong evidence.
Holding belief until you have sufficient evidence is what you do to avoid errors. I'm not perfect, there are certainly things I am wrong about. But to the best of my ability to understand, this is not something I am wrong about.
We have pretty strong evidence to suggest that dark matter exists.
Sure, but lying to yourself will never make you happy. You're asking me to lie to myself.
Nobody has the rightful authority to question the word of God. I quoted a verse from the Bible to you. We accept God's word without question because we are His humble servants. It would be arrogant to suppose we have permission to question His word, and it would be evil for us to desire to question His word. When you are presented with a Bible quote, you accept it as true and holy. When a demon tells you to question it, or claims that it's false, you repent and ask Jesus to shield you from this demonic temptation. In the end, we must always conclude that the word of God is correct.
And yet you continue to demonstrate clear evidence to the contrary. If you're not plagued by demons then show me your embrace of God.
You put understanding before faith. That's backwards. I assure you, this is something you are wrong about.
True, but we have a thousand times more evidence to confirm that God exists. Evidence to which you are blind.
If (A) I was asking you to lie to yourself, and (B) lying to yourself will never make you happy, then (C) actively religious people cannot be happier than irreligious people.
This is basic logic:
A ∧ B ∴ CAnd yet (C) is demonstrably false, an assertion which I substantiated with hard data. And that was just one survey. Survey after survey repeatedly demonstrates that actively religious people are far happier.
I'll reply to some of the various other things you wrote, but this is the heart of our discussion. The crux, if you will. Your perspective is that you're too smart to believe in God, and you refuse to acknowledge that God blesses His faithful believers with happiness. You believe that intelligent people choose unhappiness despite the obvious fact that it would be rather unwise to intentionally choose unhappiness, by virtue of the very definition of happiness. The only possible explanation for your insistent rejection of God is your unknowing loyalty to Satan, who has successfully convinced you that not even he exists.
Then like I said earlier, you have no method to determine what you worship is a good being. That should terrify you if you are a good person and immediately make you second guess everything.
This is a false dichotomy.
Nope, it's the correct way around.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(philosophy)
If you think you have evidence that I haven't seen before I am all ears.
This argument is based on the false premise that religious people would see their religion as a lie. I'm an atheist, so if I were to embrace christianity I would see it as a lie.
Nope. I have no evidence for it, so I do not believe it. It has nothing to do with my intelligence.
Once again, belief is not a choice.
And correlation does not imply causation, therefore you cannot rationally say that being religious makes you more happy.
No, the actual explanation is my responses above. And this is also a fallacy:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Holmesian_fallacy
I quoted the true word of God — the holy Bible. When you parrot your demons who claim it's false, you reveal your foolish allegiance, but still you must know deep in your heart that God is good.
I'm not trying to prove anything here. If you think I am, I have to wonder what led you to think that.
My primary goal here should be readily obvious: Matthew 28:19–20, the Great Commission. I am planting a seed, and praying your soil is fertile.
Your primary goal here, by contrast, is laid out in Romans 1:18-32. I pray your disposition is temporary and reversible.
You're fully immersed in it. But until you establish a penitent relationship with God, you are blind.
If you're honestly not trying to prove how clever you are, then submit to God in faith, and the copious evidence can then be revealed to you.
No matter how much you insist upon that, I repeatedly choose to believe in the Lord our God. I accept that you don't yet understand how belief can be a choice, but it most certainly is.
I have zero doubt that the cause of happiness is God's blessing. Joy is quintessentially Christian.
That's a circular argument. If the devil had a holy book you'd see the same thing about how the devil is the good guy.
I do not think that. I linked it because it is the golden standard for belief, and it requires evidence before belief.
I've been having these sorts of conversations with christians for over a decade. If christians had anything convincing to say, I think I would have heard it by now.
it's not. I'm honestly just talking with you for the sake of enjoyment at this point.
The "look at the trees" argument is an invalid one.
Nope, evidence must come before belief, and belief is not a direct choice.
Do you not see how ridiculous this argument is? Of course the Devil lies, but the difference between God and Satan is under most circumstances glaringly obvious.
The golden standard for belief is a mustard seed.
And who do you think has been motivating you to do that? Time and again, it is the Holy Spirit who moves you. God loves you despite your continued rejection of Him. Yet every time you receive another opportunity to drink of His water, you instead choose to follow your demons.
I'm guessing you didn't actually read Romans 1:18-32. Please do. If you can be honest with yourself, you'll find it all too familiar. What you call "the sake of enjoyment" is described.
Faith exists only because belief is a direct choice. Surely you don't deny the existence of faith.
So then if you understand that there is a chance that what your reading is lies, then why don't you put any effort into determining if what you are reading is lies?
That parable says nothing about it being the gold standard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question
None of this is true. My motivations are my own.
Like I said in the other thread, I don't derive any value from bible verses.
For the sake of experiment, choose to believe that the moon is made of cheese then. You can't do it, because you know better.
Depends what you mean by "faith".
If you're talking about blind faith, then it exists as much as any other concept can, and it is almost by definition an error.
If by faith you mean trust, then in the same way it exists. But even that is based on information you hold to believe as true, which is not something that is under anybody's direct control.
Reply to "regardless of government size", part 1 of 2:
A couple of problems that make this incorrect:
So no, corporations are not incentivized to lobby a tiny government which exists strictly to protect the people's liberty, any more than they're incentivized to lobby you and me personally.
Except lobbying isn't bribery. It's just speech, similar to advertising. I can tell my senator how great the Fediverse is and how he should make an account here, and that would count as lobbying.
The root problem is that the federal government has amassed far too much power. And to break that down, there are mainly two parts to that root problem:
Both have been grossly misinterpreted in violation of the Tenth Amendment to give the federal government unrestricted control over the states. The solution is for SCOTUS to apply the doctrine of originalism to restore these two clauses to their intended meaning. If they have the cahoonas to do that, ~2.87 million federal civilian employees will suddenly be out of a job, and many of our lost freedoms will be restored overnight. Oh yeah, and the incentive to lobby will move to the state level, where governors and state legislatures actually have to worry about losing taxpayers over bad policies.
Sure, well both DNC and RNC are coalitions, and we don't all agree on the details. But my view that the sole responsibility of the federal government is to protect the people's liberty is a fairly generic Republican view. Border protection and national defense are the only expensive requirements of that.
Agreed!
Agreed!
No!
Agreed!
It basically didn't exist in the beginning, I am aware of how drastically things have changed.
When you say "natural" here I assume you mean that the country was intended to always have the same size of federal government (which is to say basically a size of nothing). However the founding fathers intended the country to always be changing and adapting, to always become better and better. I agree that the federal government needs to be smaller (for instance I would personally cut the IRS to a 10th it's size, because that's all they would really need if we switched to georgism). However, just because it needs to be smaller doesn't mean it should barely exist. When our country was founded, it was done so with the Articles of Confederation, and it was a chaotic disaster.
If the government is tiny, then corporations are unfettered, and that is just as bad. But even so, even with a small government, lobbying is still power that they would directly benefit from.
If that's all lobbying was, I would be inclined to agree with you, but that's not all lobbying is. Paying for campaign contributions, promising contributions, etc are all also legal and considered lobbying. And it is effectively bribery. It's also legal to offer politicians lucrative job opportunities. These things are corruption and destroy our freedoms.
I had to go back to keep track of what we agreed(?) was the problem, corporate control. You say it is the two above doctrines, I disagree, believing it is a multifaceted problem of lobbying, monopolies, laizze-faire policy, etc.
I simply don't see how removing the government's ability to regulate commerce would lead to less corporate control of america. Corporations would still control our wages, place of employement, type of employement, hours, how money is distributed, the media (narrative), etc. If anything it would make it harder for the government to prevent these corporations from harming our freedom.
That's progressive revisionism. They most certainly did not. If they were still around today, they'd be rallying the militia.
You say that like it's a bad thing. In retrospect it's clear that our situation then was far preferable to where we are today. The federal government's only problem then was they couldn't get the several states to give them any money, which is a perfectly acceptable problem. What's more, the convention of the states had no authority to discard the Articles, so they remain our rightful federal law. I don't deny the fact that the Constitution is well accepted by almost 100% of American citizens, but the least we can do is restore it to its original intent. If we ever do, though, then you'll find me advocating to restore the Articles.
If government is tiny then businesses are tiny. You can lobby your governor just as you can lobby your next-door neighbor, and there's nothing wrong with that. You can lobby me, just as you're sorta doing now.
This is a symptom of big government. When politicians have next to no power, there's no sense in spending money to help them.
I concede I wish I was better at staying on track in this sort of enormous conversation.
Let's distinguish between state and federal control. I believe it's a sovereign state's role to regulate commerce within their borders as they see fit. So business sizes should vary according to state culture.
I've already addressed this. It's false. When you sell your labor, you set the price you want to charge, and seek out one or more customers willing to pay that price. Corporations are nothing more than people who pay other people for their labor, as a voluntary agreement between both parties. Neither party controls the other.
This is all radically disconnected from reality. Corporations don't control any of these things. You really should start a business of your own, if for no other reason than just to learn how little power it gives you.
They quite literally built a system in place to add amendments to the constitution and to take them away if needed. Why would they have done so if the intention was to keep the law static until the end of time?
It was. The economy fell apart, the states were constantly squabbling over petty things, we had Shay's rebellion, the nation's debts weren't being payed. The currency of the time had no value. Britain was screwing the country over with it's blockade (which couldn't be solved due to the lack of any federal power). The articles of confederation was such a disaster that it had such a short lived life that the founders themselves got rid of it.
You have no evidence for this, let alone causation.
Politicians have power by definition, and corporations have a direct incentive to get as much power as they can. So there will always be motivation to spend money to bribe them regardless of the power they hold. They might spend less, sure, but they will still do it.
Same. It's incredibly difficult.
So states should regulate commerce, but not the federal government, is that what you mean to say? If so, then how would that work out for situations where the regulation/unregualtion in surrounding states impacts a different state? For example, if california legalized weed and had the effect of making weed more available to the surrounding states, how would those surrounding states deal with it?
If everything was small business and there was greater power in the hands of laborers, and if the internet didn't exist then maybe this would be true. But the modern reality is not like that. Corporations set the wage, you apply, and if you tell them you need more money to work there they tell you to get lost*. Job postings receive hundreds, sometimes thousands of applications. Why would they lower their profitability by giving you the wage you set if the next person in the very long line will work just as hard for cheaper?
* I am aware this is less so for higher skill jobs, but most jobs you have very little power in this regard.
Corporations tell their workers what to do and therefore control their workers. Same goes for hours. If I told my boss that I will only work Sundays-Thursdays from now on, I would be fired. That is a form of control.
If I were to start a business it would be a small one and therefore have no control. But again, the problem generally isn't small businesses, it's the big ones.
They do control each of these things, and I can explain how:
place of employement - Corporations quite literally have been forcing people to return to offices or face dismissal. There are other kinds of this action, but that's just one example.
type of employement - Corporations are the one who decide if you're exempt, non-exempt, a contractor, what the job responsibilities are, etc.
hours - If you refuse to work the hours you are told you are fired.
how money is distributed - At no point does your average worker control this. The higher ups decide this and almost universally decide that the majority should go to them. If businesses were truly democratic, then you'd never see a single company giving a CEO the money for a brand new yacht every year.
the media (narrative) - Virtually all media companies are owned by the rich, and they do not allow news articles and the like to be against them. For example, the Washington Post is owned by Bezos, and you'll never see an article from them criticizing Bezos or Amazon.
Reply to "built a system", part 2 of 2:
Like any market, supply and demand does determine price. If you want to be a forest ranger, you'll be competing against a whole lot of people who like the idea of getting paid to hang out in the forest all day. You'll get much better pay as a garbage man, since fewer people like the thought of taking that job. But as individuals, we can choose whatever kind of job we want to work, balancing our skills and aptitudes with our personal tastes and how much we value monetary remuneration compared to other measures of job satisfaction. And if you're clever, you can figure out how to spend all day in the forest and make well over $100k (start a logging company).
Depends on the type of work. Personally I don't care when people work, as long as they show up for meetings and get their jobs done well. But sure, if you're a gas station attendant then you'd better show up before the start of your shift.
If you like remote work, and your manager doesn't understand that you're productive working from home, then the job's a bad match for you and you should find a better match. That's not anyone having control over the other party; it's just conflicting values.
I've known people to negotiate their status when getting hired. Everything's on the table in a negotiation. You just need to recognize it as a negotiation, and learn to negotiate well.
Again, this is very much dependent on the kind of job. Many jobs just require you to get a certain amount of work done.
You lost me here. First off, we wouldn't want a business to be democratic any more than we'd want our country to be. A democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what to eat for supper. It's a tragically terrible idea, under almost all circumstances. So no, of course businesses aren't democratic.
If you've ever tried to hire a CEO (and it's obvious you haven't), you'd know it's extremely hard to find someone qualified to do the job well. Again, their compensation is a function of supply and demand. There's almost zero supply. And if you want to be cheap and hire an inexperienced or second-rate CEO, you're taking a big risk with the life-blood of the company.
With both of those points established, I'm lost as to your overall point about how money is distributed. You get a paycheck or direct deposit. Some businesses pay cash. A few will pay in bitcoin or other cryptocurrency. You don't seem to be discussing any of these things, but they're how money is distributed.
Yes, well that's true if we're only discussing the mass media. Most of the conservative media outlets are tiny operations.
But that's not evidence that companies seek power over people. It's just evidence that the personality type of journalists tends to be leftist, and while that's not true of all journalists, they've banded together with like-minded people.
Even in the worst case examples, big tech silencing conservatives, which is a very real problem with examples far too numerous to count (Why do my mailings from Team DeSantis keep going to spam, no matter how many times I click "not spam"?), that's not corporations trying to control people. It's just employees with personal political preferences who work alongside like-minded people, and who believe they're making the world a better place.
Agreed. And with today's huge population, the supply is so huge that it depresses everybody's wages. The internet only makes it worse with how easy it is to apply to hundreds of jobs.
The end result is that the average person has no control over wages.
And that's you, which is great. But most places aren't like that and instead control it under threat of termination.
I think we have a difference of opinion over what constitutes control.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/control
I'm more or less using definition 1a
You can't have negotiation without leverage, and you can't have leverage when the market is oversupplied.
This is pretty much the same issue as above. So I'll move on.
You might not want our country to be democratic, but the vast majority of people do.
A democracy is the way in which the social contract is maintained. The alternative is the wolves just slaughtering the lambs. In reality, there are 10 lambs for every one wolf.
That's because today's corporations are bloated. If everything was small to medium business it wouldn't be a problem.
I'm talking about the percentage cut of what each person gets, and how CEOs get overpaid.
https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-in-2020/
It absolutely is. If you control what media people consume, you control what they think, and that is power.
Here is an example of the Sinclair stations using that power:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZggCipbiHwE
I'll leave you with this:
https://www.npr.org/2020/10/05/918520692/facebook-keeps-data-secret-letting-conservative-bias-claims-persist
As somebody who works in tech, I can tell you the answer is likely just that they send our so many emails that it trigger's your email host's spam filters. It's often a case of quantity instead of content. Either that or a really stupid bug. The whole field of tech is littered with them.
Reply to "just my opinion", Part 1 of 2:
I thought the Capitalism vs Socialism subreddit was pretty great, though I didn't spend a ton of time there, and I was mostly a lurker. But on several occasions I was impressed by the level of discourse there.
Why don't you start you own? Establish your own rules, and set your own culture. I know such things can be difficult to get off the ground, but maybe it's worth a try.
Well it's theoretically impossible (or extremely hard) to prevent natural monopolies, which is why they're called natural. In practice, though, there's not many of them. Usually they're owned by a municipality, such as water supply for urban folks who lack their own wells, and waste processing for the same folks who lack septic tanks. Physical constraints make competition difficult in these markets.
Most large corporations are groups that grow vastly larger than their natural size due to government assistance and encouragement.
A tiny government naturally coincides with tiny businesses. Consider our founding culture in the Eighteenth Century; the big multinational companies were the Dutch East India Trading Co and the East India Co, both of which were state-chartered monopolies. By contrast, the nascent US flourished with only tiny businesses and family farms. That is our natural business culture, to which we should strive to return.
Apples and oranges.
When you picture a company, think of a man with a fruit cart selling fresh fruit at a farmer's market — that's the quintessential company. His family are back home picking fruit on the family farm, while he heads to market to compete against the other vendors. Customers are free to compare which fruit vendor offers the freshest fruit, and buy a little, or a lot, or none at all.
The fact that you're comparing a fruit vendor, who offers you a fresh apricot for 7¢, to a blood-thirsty dictator who proclaims "everyone must placate those afflicted with gender dysphoria, on penalty of death" is a strain of the imagination. A company is a collective of practitioners of freedom.
True, but so? You keep trying and failing until you succeed. That's the American way.
It's fundamentally different. The lottery is pure chance, while building a business is a measure of one's intelligence and drive to succeed.
It's hardly a fantasy. It's the American way. And it's hardly "la la land". Have you never started your own business?
What do you mean by "abusive"? Big bad boss man said you need to show up on time, or else you'll get fired? No jobs are abusive. They're voluntary agreements for the sale of one's labor. Nothing more, nothing less.
It doesn't, because I live in one of the most rural places in the country, and I barely ever shop at Walmart.
I really just don't have as much free time as I'd like. I have a full time job, a disabled girl friend, ~3 active friend/family groups, etc. At best I get an hour or two a day to myself and I'd rather do something else other than moderating.
It's definitely hard, but not impossible.
Historically that is not true. What you're describing is laissez-faire capitalism, and every time it has been tried it has been an objective failure. It doesn't result in tiny businesses, it results in huge ones that create corporate towns.
Companies do just the same when given the opportunity. They just hire mercenaries and assassins, and that's where the term "bannana republic" comes from.
And armed forces aren't the only way authoritarians control the people, they also do so through law, which the corporations control.
I'm not talking about small family owned businesses, I am talking about mega-corporations. Google, microsoft, amazon, meta, etc.
When the United Fruit Company toppled governments in latin america, they were in fact not practicioners of freedom. Companies are just as capable of subverting the will of the people and destroying freedoms as dictators.
You keep failing until you starve to death, the medical debt collectors come, etc. The american dream has long been dead because we do not live in a society with social mobility.
I am already struggling to pay for rent, food, and utility bills, and soon my student debt will add to that. I do not have anywhere near the amount of money to start one.
I'm talking about violations of labor laws that go unpunished, workplace injuries, poverty wages, excessive hours, repetitive strain injury, wage theft.
https://www.greenamerica.org/choose-fair-labor/us-companies-exploiting-workers
https://apnews.com/article/how-companies-rip-off-poor-employees-6c5364b4f9c69d9bc1b0093519935a5a
https://hbr.org/2020/06/times-up-for-toxic-workplaces
Not all companies are bad ones to work at, but my point is that not everybody can just up and move to a new job when there are so many companies that are like this.
Then it sounds like you're lucky.
That makes sense. But then how do you find this time for long-form arguments with strangers on the internet?
Fiddlesticks. Look at Hong Kong until China annexed it. Small and medium-sized companies flourished. There are a ton of similar examples. I challenge you to point out a single huge multinational corporation (historical or present day) that grew without government assistance.
Yeah no. Read the wiki on banana republics. From the intro:
Their governments instigate and enable their problem.
It seems we're in general agreement that small family owned businesses are far preferable to mega-corporations. (After all, we're both here in the Fediverse.)
Our only differences on this topic seem to be that I view small businesses as the essential heart of American market economics, and I view mega-corps as mutants resulting from government bloat.
Again, you focused on negativity to the exclusion of truth. The American dream is alive and well, and there are numerous success stories all around us. The idea that it's "dead" (let alone long dead) has no basis in reality.
A good example is Donald Trump, who took a small loan of a million dollars … (I'm joking, but my above point is true.)
Depending on the type of business, you really don't need any money, or perhaps just a few dollars. Going back to my fruit cart example, it doesn't cost any money to pick fruit and sell it. And there are a ton of sub-$100 sweaty-startup ideas out there. You may not have the time or the drive to start one, but you certainly have the money.
I have no doubt that some employees who hate their jobs feel trapped. But I contend that's just their feeling, and they're not really trapped at all. Especially in the post-covid epoch, when there's such a labor shortage that you could walk into just about any business and get an interview.
"Lucky" is not the right word. I didn't grow up here. I've lived in a bunch of places, from urban to suburban, and now rural. I moved here because I like the area and the people here. And there are plenty of local small businesses I support as much as I can.
I usually don't lol. It's very rare for me to get into a conversation as much of a tangled mess as this one.
Hong Kong is an incredibly niche place. To point to that city state as a good example to extrapolate the effects of government policy is a bad idea/methodology.
I think you missed my point, I am not stating that all or even many corporations become monopolies without government assistance. Usually what happens is that a corporation gets so big that they gain so much control that they can alter government policy, and therefore they grow with government assistance that they themselves implemented. Most if not all monopolies follow this pattern. First the start small, then they get big, then they push out competition, then they buy out the politicians, then they set the laws that make them even bigger.
Instigate? No. Enable? Absolutely.
The mega-corporations are the natural result of capitalism. You can't have one without the other.
There are also numerous lottery winner stories around. That doesn't mean that everybody should buy lottery tickets as a means to success.
Nowadays people are too poor to reasonably afford a home, food, and the basic necessities. The retirement age keeps getting higher. The majority of americans are living paycheck to paycheck. It absolutely has been dead, and for a while.
Inheriting wealth is not a means for being successful for the overwhelming majority of americans.
The success of a business is directly tied to the starting investment.
If you don't feel like you are free then what is the point? Regardless, it's not just a feeling, because objectively, vertical mobility is not doing well in the united states. Horizontal mobility is not true mobility.
"Just about any business" does not equate to a livable wage, because just about all businesses have employees who are being paid below a livable wage. And like I said, horizontal mobility is not true mobility.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index
I'm flattered. Thank you. I find the conversation enjoyable, though I agree it's a tangled mess. Yet if you'd find it prudent to quickly wind it down, I won't be offended.
Well then we're close to splitting hairs. My contention is governments should be too small to enable companies to grow huge. I get that we don't completely see eye-to-eye on this, but I'm not sure it's worth our bickering over the details.
I mentioned the importance of definitions recently. Among people who disagree over capitalism, I find we are often operating on different definitions. What if we just talk about free markets? There's nothing about freedom that inherently gives rise to mega-corporations. They didn't even exist until relatively modern times.
No kidding. When you hold a race, there's one winner. You might give out medals for second and third place, but most competitors are losers. And that's great. Everyone goes home and tries again tomorrow. In the end, some people are never able to win at all, due to lack of drive, technique, or what-have-you, and that's fine. Life isn't fair, and we wouldn't want it to be. All that matters is that everyone's able to compete, fair and square.
Okay, now I really wonder where you live. Is it a West Coast city? What you describe is absolutely not the America I know and love.
Yeah, it was a joke. I explicitly said I was joking.
No, not usually. Its rate of scale is directly tied to the starting investment. It's eventual success is only tied to that certain kinds of tech startups, where a ton of work is needed before there's anything to show for it. For most businesses, success is tied to vision and execution.
The point is always God. And God, incidentally, is the source of our freedom. People may feel a lack of freedom resulting from estrangement from God. That's hardly the fault of corporations (although you could make a good case that any corporation propagating secular culture is indirectly at fault.)
What's a livable wage? That's a mighty subjective phrase. It wasn't long ago that many of us lived in single-room log cabins that we built ourselves, hauled our own water without plumbing, used outhouses, lacked electricity, had a horse and cart instead of a truck, and grew most of our own food. And we were happy. Because we had God, and in the end that's all we've ever needed. If you're defining a "livable wage" in terms of anything more than that standard, it's unreasonable.
I am enjoying it too, and it's quite alright. I'm (so far) able to keep up.
I'll move on then from this part.
Even the term "free markets" is incredibly vague. And depending on what you count as "modern times", even capitalism itself hasn't existed until modern times. So it would kind of not make sense to expect to see mega corps in an economic system that doesn't permit the kind of corps we see today.
And I hate to repeat myself, but core principle of capitalism is competition, but competitions inherently have winners. And therefore the freedom you speak of inherently gives rise to mega-corps. They buy each other up and kill off competitors until they become mega-corps.
Any given loser of a competition under capitalism may not immediately die, but each loss forces a company closer and closer to dying.
We unfortunately don't have that though due to inheritance discrepancies, and the burden of entry that corporations put in place through their control of politicians, and through the inherent difficulty of starting a business in an economy as specialized as ours.
For instance if somebody wanted to start up a new business to compete with google, at a minimum they would need several billion dollars to have a reasonable chance of success. Google has such a huge market share and is so well established that it would take decades for any new company to put an actual dent in google's market share.
I actually live on the East coast, in a mid to large sized city, I think mine is 3rd in pop for my state. And as for your second bit here, I haven't made anything up.
Majority of citizens living paycheck to paycheck
Housing is increasingly unaffordable with an 18% hike in prices I don't know about you, but my wage has never increased anywhere close to be able to match that. Grocery prices are no different
The retirement age is going up
Sorry, I am a very argumentative person if you couldn't tell already lol
This is another one of the issues that I wish I had more data on, but unfortunately do not. The closest I was able to find was this:
https://www.luisazhou.com/blog/startup-failure-statistics/
And the most frequent cause of failure is lack of cash, which definitely ties into what I've been saying.
So this is similar to the drug addiction/true christian inverse correlation that I've been talking about in one of the other threads. I know you don't quite agree with the freedom index I've been using, but freedom is not in any way correlated with christianity.
Sure, it's a subjective phrase, and I would personally like to see it added and defined within a new amendment to the constitution, though it probably would never happen
As for an actual definition, a living wage should be defined as a wage that is sufficient to raise a family on, with adequate housing and food. A living wage should be a basic but decent wage for a family.
I would also like to point out that you seem to have missed my point about the lack of freedom through vertical mobility.
I don't think that was the reason, I think the reason was because life was literally simpler and more connected to nature. Also you can't be happy if you can't afford food and shelter.
I'm not saying a livable wage is one in which you will be able to afford anything fancy. It should be a basic wage, but enough so that you can have a family without worry
This is false. A broad class of competitions do not have winners. Only zero-sum games have winners. The economy is not a zero sum game. Every participant adds value.
Oh yeah? May I introduce you to Gabriel Weinberg, who started a Google competitor in his basement with a $0 investment, which now earns $25 million annually.
It's true, but most successful entrepreneurs learn from previous failures, so many of those failed companies generally result in eventual success.
I've occasionally thought it would be nice to have a website where anyone could post "bills" they wish were actual laws, and other users could vote on them. It'd be fun. Not that I really think we need any more laws. I just wonder what people would come up with.
You'd struggle to transform that into a legally reliable definition. Does it include iPads for the kids? How about the cost of pet grooming? Vacations for the whole family to the Bahamas every couple of months? Where exactly do you draw the line? Again, it was commonplace for most people to grow their own food in the not too distant past, and we lived simple lives. Isn't a living wage, then, $0?
I didn't miss it. I just skipped the reply. Because I see plenty of evidence that vertical mobility is alive and well. You can deny it all you'd like, but there are so many rags-to-riches stories. Maybe you don't hear about them much because they're mostly Republican.
Jesus could.
This varies wildly by industry. Some are zero-sum, some are positive sum. And the age of an industry is usually the defining factor for this, which means most industries turn into zero-sum. Take for instance nuclear fuel pellets. A company who takes part in such an industry is in a zero-sum one because of how limited the demand is for it. And the demand for nuclear fuel pellets doesn't change much at all because of how long it takes to build new reactors, how much political force it takes to build one, etc. A company in such an industry can't expand the total demand much at all, so there is no new value they can add.
An MIT graduate with past business experience and their foot in the door a decade and a half ago isn't really evidence that just anyone can start a new business today to compete with google.
Not everybody can afford to have a failed company on their hands.
I think that is a fun idea and I would fully support it. I think you'd be surprised at the amount of "socialist" policies that are widely popular. It would be a difficult thing to pull off though given that most people don't really know how to write in leagalise, and how many policies need to be rather complicated or need a high level of understanding to make sense.
None of that crap.
Food + Housing + Basic utilities + Transportation + Healthcare (if not already universalized) + Maybe a 5-10% on top for discretionary spending.
However much each of these end up costing, calculated yearly, added up, should be a reasonable start.
If everybody owned land, it would be much closer to $0. But you still need to buy/get/pay for fertilizer, water, heating, taxes etc. Those things aren't free. I would love to own my own self-sufficient homestead and have been rather obsessed with videos about it. I wish everybody had the money/land for it, but that's not how things are.
And additionally, everybody having their own homestead isn't generally a good thing for efficiency, because economies of scale probably also applies to food production, and therefore it is more efficient to have industrial farming as the main food source.
I can't remember if I posted this link elsewhere, but I'll do it again just in case:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index
We are #27. We could be doing far better.
I don't hear about them because I don't really care for lottery winning stories, and avoid the news sources that show them. I want news with more substance than that.
We aren't all Jesus and are therefore subject to the negative effects of poverty.
I'm not formally trained in economics or game theory, but this doesn't seem right to me. Anyone employed in the manufacture of nuclear fuel pellets adds value to the economy simply by virtue of showing up for work, and doing whatever it is they do.
Again, entrepreneurs usually need to fail, and build upon those failures, before finding success. It's normal.
The fact that he's an MIT grad doesn't mean much. Anyone can start a Google competitor, but the kind of people who do are the same kind of people likely to want to attend MIT.
Almost everyone can, though not everyone wants to. It's stressful and time-consuming, though also rewarding in a variety of ways. Even if it fails.
Thanks! I wouldn't be at all surprised by the popularity of socialist policies. Kids are naive. There'd be a ton of things like "Free ice cream for everyone!" As a serious policy proposal it would be objectionable, but as a playful idea it's fun to imagine. As for legalese and complications, you could make suggestions to improve someone else's idea.
What kind of food? Caviar? What kind of housing? McMansions? What kind of basic utilities? All 800,000 TV channels? What kind of transportation? A Bugatti? What kind of healthcare? Cosmetic surgeries for pets? It's very hard to draw the line anywhere above $0, which is the technically correct number.
You can make your own fertilizer with compost. You can haul your own water up from the stream. You can chop your own wood for heating. Property taxes are a racket. Yes, this presumes everyone owns property of suitable acreage, and with a stream, and that's unrealistic for everyone. But it's entirely possible for some.
I love those videos too. I try not to spend much time on YouTube, but on occasion I can easily lose an hour or two to My Self Reliance.
But to your point about a "living wage", it's going to vary from $0 for some people on up to — I shudder to think what the upper bound of that range is.
True, but as I mentioned I think economic efficiency is overrated.
We can all strive to be more like Jesus. I know it's not easy, but there's so much value in trying.
But when they do that it doesn't change the demand for nuclear fuel pellets. The demand is largely static, so in order to sell X more pellets, X pellets from other producers must go unsold/not made. Somebody else has to lose, which makes it a zero sum game.
It does. Not everybody is an MIT grad or has the skills to be one, and yet you say that just anybody can compete with google. That is a contradiction.
60% of the country cannot because they are living paycheck to paycheck and cannot afford it.
Basically every other developed nation seems to think otherwise. For example, we are more or less the only one without universal healthcare, that's what's naive.
Basic food, not caviar. Basic housing, not mcmansions. Utilities should include heating, cooling, water, electric, literally just the basic necessitites, not cable. Etc.
You're splitting hairs at this point.
Nobody can survive on $0. You need to have food water and shelter.
If it is unrealistic for everyone then it isn't a reasonable answer to what the minimum wage should be.
If housing in this country wasn't so fucked, it would probably be around $40-50k a year. Nobody is buying caviar and a bugatti with that budget.
Blaming individuals for the failures of a system, and suggesting individuals change to deal with that defect in the system is irrational.
The production of anything means it's not zero-sum. Demand can expand and contract over time in any market, but that doesn't matter. If you grow an apple or produce a nuclear fuel pellet, you add value to the economy. Now if there are multiple sellers competing, then it'll drive down the price. But we're not discussing prices here.
It's a matter of drive. Anyone can try to compete with Google. Someone must be adequately driven, and reasonably intelligent to succeed. But everyone who fails will gain the opportunities to build on those failures and start a more successful venture.
Again you can start a business for $0 or next to nothing.
Why would we Americans care what other countries think? We're blessed by God to be the greatest country on Earth. People flock from around the world to live here, and they want to so badly that they're willing to become illegal just to live here. It's very rare that you can find a principle applicable to other countries which also happens to be applicable to the US. If some other country wants to give out "free" ice cream to all of its citizens (in exchange, of course, for an obscenely high tax), they can have at it, for all we care.
My point was that it's subjective what the "necessities" are. Some people like me will say it costs $0, while others may insist it's a minimum of $250k. This is complicated by the fact that the dollar is worth dramatically different values in different parts of the country, a fact often ignored. Generally speaking it's worth much less in urban areas.
Again, grow your own food, haul your own water up from the stream, and build your own shelter out of logs you felled yourself. $0, just like our forefathers.
Whoa, I thought we were discussing your notion of a "livable wage" as an abstract concept, but now you're changing it to minimum wage. The concept of a minimum wage is evil for multiple reasons.
First and foremost, it's a free country, and so we're all allowed to negotiate our own terms of business. If I want to hire someone for $1 a day, and that person agrees to the compensation, it's nobody else's business. Not yours, not the government's, nobody's.
Secondly, minimum wages are absolutely disastrous for the economy, and that has been shown time and again. When you run a business, you have a certain budget to spend on compensation. Let's say you want to hire two people to help you, and you can afford a maximum of $100 per day to hire them. That means you can pay them about $6 per hour maximum. Now some busybody steps in, and introduces an oppressive law that you have to pay more than $6. Well that sucks, doesn't it. That means you can't hire two people after all. You can still hire one person up to $12 per hour, but you'll have to overwork him to produce the results of two workers. Meanwhile somebody else will be jobless. Now let's say the busybody comes back and says $12 is still too low! Well fine, that means you can't hire anyone at all. So now we have two people out of work who would have had jobs. And it also means you'll need to find a robot that's cheaper than $100 per day, because if you can't then the busybody just drove you out of business.
The concept of minimum wage is un-American and downright evil.
What system? We're all individuals.
Value to the economy isn't the issue here though. The topic is about whether or not a company hurts another through competition, and economic value cannot explain or measure the of hurting other companies.
If 10,000 fuel pellets are needed for the year, then the market will create and sell roughly 10,000 pellets for the year. If company A sells extra pellets, going from 1k/yr to 2k/yr those sales need to come from somewhere within that 10,000 demand limit. As a result all other companies lose 1k/yr in sales. Maybe the majority of that loss goes to company B or C, or maybe it is spread out. It would only be a positive sum game if the 10,000 pellet demand was able to increase, but it can't due to the restrictive amount of reactors. As a result of all of this, this industry is a zero sum game.
That's a part of it, but not the whole.
Even if that is true (which it is instead highly misleading), it has nothing to do with the impact of losing a business. One is the cost of startup the other is the cost of loss.
I didn't say that we should, but you said that kids are naive when it is instead developed nations that are implementing these policies.
Seems to me that having the highest number of school shootings should instantly disqualify us from such a title.
Actually it doesn't quite work out that way. Americans overall spend more on healthcare than most other nations because of how inefficient it is to have insurance companies leeching money away from the american people.
Overall countries spend less on healthcare with socialized medicine.
Only to a degree. We can objectively measure the amount of food and water you need, what kind of shelter is the mimimally viable product while still being healthy, etc.
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
The two are tied together. There should be a minimum wage, and it should be a livable one. That's how it was started and it should have stayed.
No it's not. Poverty wages are what's evil and the solution to them is a minimum, livable wage.
It is the business of the government to protect the people, and greedy corporations who pay poverty wages is one such thing that we need protection from.
I disagree that it is disastrous, but even if it was I wouldn't mind much since the economy is the main driving force for pollution.
Right there is your lie about it being $100 per day. These companies absolutely have the money to pay a living wage yet they only set the "maximum" they are willing to pay such that it is a poverty wage. These companies rake in billions upon billions of dollars a year in profits. The money is absolutely there they just like to pretend that it isn't.
The government/capitalism.
I doubt any economists would agree with this. Even with declining demand, the addition of every grain of rice is a contribution to the economy.
The cost of business loss is equivalent to gained experience. Let's say you extract clay from your backyard and use it to make pottery, which you then sell at your local market. Startup cost is $0, as you hand-made your own kiln and your own cart to transport your pottery.
You have a few sales, but not many. When you see people walk away from your table without buying anything, you stop them to ask them why. Several of them tell you that your products are all too small for their taste.
So you close down your shop, head back home, and get to work rebuilding your kiln to be ten times larger. Two months later you open up a brand new shop, based on your gained experience, and now your pottery sells like wildfire.
You seem to misunderstand that phrase. It is commonly used to express the limitations of government provision. But I was talking about God's provision, and there's no limitation to that.
Where did you get that idea? Nowhere in our Constitution does it say that government is supposed to protect the people.
Every time you imply that corporations are "greedy", you sound out of touch and inexperienced. Please start your own company. You will learn so much about the real world. It doesn't need to be anything fancy. Sell an old book on ebay. You will learn so much.
You make it so clear that you've never run a business and hired anyone. You're completely out of touch. Businesses have tight budgets. Sell that old book on ebay, and grow your nascent business enough that you want to hire someone to help you out. You will quickly learn that you can afford very little to hire someone, yet you're overburdened with work so you need to hire someone as cheap as possible.
There are many actually. There are markets for which the demand cannot increase. And like I said earlier "contribution to the economy" isn't the issue here, the market's capability for demand is. As a result there are industries that are zero sum games, with an overall tendency to move towards zero sum.
Not when your house or car is collateral. Not when it is the only thing paying your rent and keeping food on the table.
We were talking about homesteading, which absolutely has a limit.
Then why do we have an army? If the government has no responsibility to protect us, then we could easily save hundreds of billions of dollars of tax payer money by disbanding all armed forces.
I don't care about how it sounds, it is the truth.
This is just an ad hominem.
Only because they budget boat loads of money for executives and shareholders.
The economy is fundamentally not a zero sum game. It cannot be, under any circumstances. I'm done arguing this point, as I'm not an economist or a game theorist, and you're not either.
Sure it is. We can lose all of our material possessions, and all of our food, while we retain all of the wealth in the world through our faith in God. I advise you to study Matthew 6:24-34, but even though that's only ten verses, for brevity I'll only quote one here:
We were talking about homesteading, which absolutely has a limit.
I was not talking only about homesteading. I speak of all of us who walk upon the earth.
The government has a responsibility to protect our nation as an institution; not to protect us each individually.
Except it's not. You frequently come across as confidently incorrect.
Do you have any awareness that 99.9% of businesses in the US are small businesses? Literally 99.9%. (Source) Normal businesses are far closer to my example of making pottery out of clay from your backyard than they are to giant multinational corporations. But all companies, no matter the size, are normally somewhat strapped for cash, because they need to reinvest profits to grow.
Please start a business. The only reason you have not to is if you're afraid of realizing that your entire economic theory is bunk.
I'm probably more of a game theorist than you if I am being honest. I've done game development on the side for a little while now.
But I think my point still stands because you haven't identified a flaw in my argument.
People can't afford to do that though. It is a financially bad decision to put yourself at financial risk of losing your home, transportation, or food source.
And the government cannot protect one if it fails to protect the other. Our nation is our people. It's not just the land itself.
It's objectively true:
https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
If corporations were not greedy there would be no gap between productivity and pay.
You already brought this up in a different thread. You may have missed it so I will copy and paste:
In other words, judging a company of less than 500 employees as automatically being a small business is a terrible methodology for determining how much power/how big a company is.
Other thread: https://kbin.social/m/conservative@lemmy.world/t/305925/New-York-City-Using-Brooklyn-Parks-as-Migrant-Housing#entry-comment-1680242
I have plenty of reasons. I don't want to lose what little assets I have. The time and effort requirements for such an endeavor is huge. I have no capital to start a business with. I have a disabled girlfriend who requires a lot of care (time). On top of all that, I don't really intend to live my whole life in this country, and feel I might have to leave soon due to the rise in fascism here. Why would I start a business in such a place? It just doesn't make sense.
As is I barely have enough time at the end of the day to relax to myself, let alone start a business.
That's like a plumber claiming he's familiar with the Plumb Line Method of theoretical physics because it has the word "plumb" in it. Game development requires no understanding of game theory.
I find it confusing that you thought you used to be a Christian, when not only did you never form a relationship with God, but you never even learned Jesus's teachings. I quoted from the Sermon on the Mount to you. This is literally Gospel. Again, I strongly advise you to study Matthew 6:24-34.
Then I have misunderstood the term, I apologize.
You cannot speak for me. At the time I fully believed I had such a relationship. And I absolutely was raised as a christian, having been tought Jesus' word.
That doesn't mean it is true though.
Yeah, it's all kind of just meaningless to me. It would be like if I told you to read a passage with a vague moral from a Star Trek book. It's all just fiction, made by men.
Apology accepted. In case you're curious to learn about it, you might click here. It's a good topic for online classes, in case you ever find yourself with spare time.
Did they skip all the parts about mammon, or did you just ignore them? They're fairly central to Jesus's ministry.
It does, in fact.
Even if it was written in Klingon, I'd do my best to read it and wrap my head around the point you were trying to make.
All of the Bible verses I've quoted to you and linked to you have been (by far) the wisest and truest words I'm able to speak. In most if not all cases, they've provided the point I was trying to make. So I find it discouraging and disheartening to know you haven't been reading them, and seriously considering them.
Whenever you encounter a quote from the Bible, begin by thinking to yourself that you're about to read something true and holy — even if you don't believe that yet, start out by telling yourself that. Then ask God — and I know you deny Him, but at least try your best to ask God — that you may receive His holy words with a sober mind, and that you may unquestioningly accept their eternal truth. Then read, and reread, and read once more, the passage until you know it well. Read the context of the passage, as much context as needed, and read it in various other translations, to help you deeply understand its truth.
And with that, yet again, I strongly advise you to study Matthew 6:24-34. That's certainly not the only thing you ought to read, but it'd be a solid start.
Thank you, I'll try to take a look at some point.
No matter what I answer here, it will just feed into this no true scottsman fallacy you have with the definition of "christian".
It seems that you are beginning with the premise that it is true. Again, that would ultimately mean that much of what you say is based on a circular argument.
I'm not talking about understanding though. I'm talking about the value you derive from something you read. I don't get any value out of bible verses. It's just junk to me even if I understand it.
I've definitely been reading them. But it's next to impossible for me to take them seriously when the whole think is so wrong.
I don't have that fallacy in my definition of "Christian" at all. A Christian is a genuine follower of Christ, of which there are many, and many more every day. The fact that some people claim to be Christian without actually following Christ does not mean there's no true Christian. It's entirely possible for you to choose to become Christian.
The only value we can have in life comes from God. When someone gives you a Bible verse, that is likely the most valuable thing you receive all day, if not all year.
And on that point, we have reached an impasse. I must abide by 2 Timothy 3:2-5, and turn away:
Thank you for all of this thought-provoking conversation. I wish you all of the best, and I pray you may yet find God.
That's not what a no true scotsman fallacy means. It's a fallacious way to deflect people from being a part of a group. It is not a statement that no such group exists.
Then it's quite odd how I have value in my life despite it being secular. It's almost like there are many sources of value in life beyond religion.
You are welcome. And thank you for keeping this as civil as it has been.
Like I said, you're not the first so I wouldn't bet on that.