@ krellin
interesting how your usage of greedy people is reserved for everyone but the people who champion it and worship it.

@mafia, I'm pretty sure you were just making a point, but I feel the need to point out that in america about 1 in 4 women are raped.

Oh yeah for sure. I just made that up for the sake of argument, the rape culture in our society is a serious problem and I did have some reservations about using that example.

I was going to say rape culture but sort of figured the .... expletive deleted .... would jump on me for it. glad you did. Good to know people know whats up.

PS mafia, I know we dont always agree but I for one am glad you are here, for no other reason than you are intelligent, well informed, and reasonable.

Thank you sic! I find our disagreements extend as far as conspiracy. Beyond that I think we're on the same page in a lot of ways.

Why is it everyone see's me as a conspiracy theorist? what conspiracies am I credited with believing in?

no sarcasm condescension or anything negative. I really dont know why this sticks with me.

Your not as extreme as Darwyn, but I'm pretty sure I've heard you advocate conspiracy theories. Haven't I?

Which?

I dont think so. I think our government has given us extreme reason for distrust. When I express that distrust I am pegged as beliveing in this alternate theory or that, when in reality it stopped at my distrust.

I seem to recall you offering support for "The government did 9/11" conspiracy theories.

I seem to recall me offering support for "The government is lying about 9/11"

Do I think criminal elements in our government orchaestrated 9-11? probably not. It's certainly possible, but probably about as likely as the official story.

As far as 9-11 goes I pretty vehemently state that it doesnt really matter who/what committed the attacks, the important part is what followed. eg. formation of DHS, passage of patriot act and other laws like it, assassination of US citizens with no charges etc.

Ah. Well that last paragraph I can definitely get behind.

Also will someone explain the whole acorn thing to me?

fow news at it again....

http://sanders.senate.gov/legislation/issue/?id=c55b16dd-e6e5-4ae5-abda-0b9f5c30a243

jokes (?) aside my knowledge of acorn is zilch. I had only one indirect experience with them. I was involved in some grassroots community organizing, we were trying to initiate a direct action "program" that had large capacity for positive change (in it's area). At one point a few decided to ask acorn for help. I asked what acorn was and they said it was basically a bunch of liberals who could possibly help us out in their limited way (statement was not explained by speaker). a few people went for a meeting and acorn basically said no, because it would 'hurt their image'. end of indirect acorn experience.

@Mafialligator - I agree that large amounts of wealth can translate into political power and the ability to have laws written in your favor. This is a big problem caused by crony capitalism not free market capitalism. Big government types that try to engineer things have allowed this to become the status quo, and it may be the largest problem we have. I do not trivialize what the poor go through. In fact the one area I believe in resdrtibution is in our school system. Why should a poor kid get less funding than a rich kid in public education. I am also in favor of a voucher system to allow poor children to go better schools rather than be left to rot in inadequate schools setting them up for failure. I do not however see how the fact that somebody is rich causes all of the problems that the poor face. I also believe that there is a moral obligation to help those that cannot help themselves in the "don't give a man fish, teach him how to fish" sense. I however don't have the right to legally force someone else to do what I believe they should.

@joshbeaudette - I disagree that crony capitalism is separable from free market capitalism. More to the point free market capitalism is only a thought experiment. Something that can only exist in theory. It will ALWAYS devolve into crony capitalism. And even totally free market capitalism would have the same troubles. But lets not go into that here.
The point I really want to address is the question of why it is that someone being rich causes other people to be poor. The answer to this question comes from Marx (*gasp* The horror! The horror!). According to Marx, industrial capitalism (and this argument also applies to post-industrial capitalism) is based on people selling their labour to capitalists, or as Marx called them, the bourgeoisie. The thing is, value is created when people work to create a product or service that can be sold to customers. The problem here is that the capitalists purchase your labour for less than it is worth to them. So for example, lets say you work in a factory making refrigerators for $12 an hour. And in an hour you make 1/10th each of 10 refrigerators. Basically it means you've made equivalent value to 1 refrigerator in that time. Now the capitalists turn around and sell those fridges for $2000, making a huge profit in the process.
Now, you the worker need a refridgerator. You go to the company you work for to buy one, you are then paying your boss, with the money you earned making the fridge, at 166.67 times what he paid you to make it. (Now obviously I'm ignoring the costs of the material here as well, and those do need to be taken into consideration, but believe me when I say there is no material cost going into building a fridge that justifies it's retail markup). Now, that is how capitalism forces people to distribute wealth upwards however, due to concepts like generalized reciprocity obviously for this to take place you don't need to purchase a fridge, if you earned money making one. the result is the same whether you give your money to your own boss or someone else's.

The point is, wealth is accumulated by capitalists because they appropriate it from other people.

The problem with the worker argument you just gave is that it only gives the labor portion of the equation. It neglects entirely the manufacturing of the parts used to construct the device, in your argument a fridge. You also have to consider from the cost of purchasing the materials used to make those parts, the cost of the machines manipulating that material, and wear over time of those self-same machines due to making the parts. Another thing I object to is the blanket label of stealing capitalist to everyone who profited from the sale of the fridge. You have to remember that all the large corporations in the world are stock based- as in anyone can own stock, and thus a share of the profit from each sale (if they have the right kind of stock, of course). These include those same workers you labeled as victims.

Naturally my argument was a simplification and I think you'll find I acknowledged that. The reason I was OK making that simplification and the reason why I acknowledged it is because this rebuttal you've come up with, doesn't change my argument. The point is, in order to make a profit, everyone along the way was paid less than the worth of the fridge, from the viewpoint of the person we are here calling "the capitalist". It has to have been or else the company would not make a profit. The very nature of making a profit results from underpaying workers, and then overcharging that same class of workers for the goods they produced. That is how profits are made.

The fact is, yes people can own tiny tiny tiny portions of the companies provided they are publicly traded. But with the amount of money workers make, and the fact that the difference between a workers wages and the basic cost of living is relatively small, the very very very rich have a much much much greater capacity to own stocks, and thus companies. The shareholder argument is a bit of a canard for this reason.

What definition of 'underpaying are you using? The value of what a certain amount of labor is worth is arbitrary, and in most cases (save that of unskilled manual labor) is agreed on by both the worker and the employer, or by unions of workers.

Acorn was made into a pariah and was the victim of an illegal bill of attainder. They were absolved of wrongdoing and yet the smear campaign worked. All Fox News has on them is unnamed sources, as usual. Their version of news is rumor and innuendo, rumors largely spread by themselves. Acorn did a lot of good work and I'm happy to see that they've reorganized into other groups.

" You also have to consider from the cost of purchasing the materials used to make those parts, the cost of the machines manipulating that material, and wear over time of those self-same machines due to making the parts."

And all those parts are made by laborers. They don't just fall out of the sky. None of the production process is *made* by the managers or the owners of capital. At each stage the surplus is extracted from labor. Most of the time that surplus isn't even reinvested in capital replacement, it's just consumed as profits for the owners. Most of these companies pass off capital replacement on the taxpayers anyway.

Shareholding is canard, because shareholders hold no power whatsoever, especially the small shareholders which the aspiring bourgeoisie trot out to make it seem like capitalism is more egalitarian than it really is because they're handed a few crumbs of nominal "ownership". More often than not these small shareholders are simply providing more of a trough for the managers and big shareholders and financial speculators to feed on, as people find their savings wiped out by the irresponsible decisions of the big bourgeoisie. The small shareholders put up the money and get none of the reward, the speculators put up none of the money and get all the reward.

I believe that people that retired on the strength of their stock portfolios would disagree with you on the value of purchasing stock.

Now I should preface this by saying I'm no economist. Namely because I think money is worthless, piles of paper that aught to be burned.

However I figure I'll offer my explanation as to why occupy wall street makes sense. It really comes down to the idea not of: OMG THE RICH ARE RICH, LIFE IS UNFAIR!!!

but, to the more logical view of: The rich wanted to make more money, they played a dangerous game and now we're all paying for it. We don't want this to happen again.

This problem is further exasperated by the increasing gap between the rich and the poor in terms of wealth, while quality of life for the middle class american family is very high as was pointed out. The level of household debt suggests this is unsustainable. Consider this, a product like say a fridge. If sold at a markup. Is the sort of thing that you often only have one per house, maybe two or three if you are very wealthy. Given the greater population is the poor. They will be the prime market. Now to sell all these fridge you make everyone needs to have money to buy said fridges. Now given that the majority of wealth is concentrated in the top end of the spectrum, but the majority of buyers are on the bottom end you begin to the see the problem. Particularly if a work for making say ten fridges gets payed the worth of one fridge, and this is happening all across america. Ten appliances for the amount of buying power required to purchase one. In the major consumer base, and you are looking at the consumer need to go into debt to buy these goods.

If the consuming base goes into debt, and the rich don't need that many appliances. Then the business model will come crashing down.

The largest pool of wealth needs to be at the bottom, in the hands of the largest consuming base. Else your system will be unsustainable as people will stop buying.

Now I feel I should justify the very first statement I wrote. A human life is worth more then any wealth. Only in our world it doesn't seem that way. Money is evil, in that it is a perversion of what aught to be the goal in life, fulfilment. Thus, my early statement about money deserving to be burned.

non-anon sources or gtfo

If investing in stocks is a good idea, why don't the Germans do it? I trust that that country knows what to do with savings better than most, and investing retirement in the stock market is very unpopular (only 6% of Germans own stock). Too many people have lost. To invest in the stock market, you have been very active about it and be up to date about the constant changes, and the average small investor doesn't have the time to do that. The Australians, by contrast, seem quite eager to expose their retirement to equity and look how that's panned out for them.

http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/business/items/201008/s2973765.htm

@damian - Money is not eavil. Nor is it good. It's an object with uses. Greed (the love of money) is evil and is really an extension of the love of power. We are all motivated by the need for power/fame (which carries it's own form of power). Power comes in many forms, inluding fame, wealth, or influence. And none of these forms are necessarily evil, it is what we do with the power we have that determines the evil or good resulting from it. Power abusers are, byt heir very nature, evil. When one uses the power strictly to make more power and to control others, then one is a power hungry pwerson (greedy). But when one shares that power to the benefit of others and, in so doing, creates more power for both themselves and others then one is benevolent (i.e. good) and doesn't abuse the power.

You misunderstand. Money is evil precisely because it has no uses derived from its form. Its use is purely artificial. It is unnecessary for a fulfilling human life.

Where as objects like: food, medicine, clothing etc. all serve a function which can be part of a fulfilling life.

While the greatest evil of money is as you describe it, greed. The insubstantial nature of money, is what makes a desire for money one of the greatest evils.

The man who starts a business and spreads money around and through is production continues to generate wealth for himself is not doing good. He is still doing evil, as he is simply hooking others into this system of insubstantiality. Work, Buy, Sleep.

This why your parallel with other forms of power is irrelevant.

@Damian, money is useful because it faciliates the smooth operation of trade, which allows us to use objects like food, medicine, clothing, that new dvd with Matt Damon.

@Draugnar, - we are all motivated not by the need for power/fame, we are all motivated to earn social standing within our social order.

We are animals, in most ape societies it is physical prowess which determines the social standing. You get whatever you can take. (at least among males, female tend to have a very different pecking order - but they are again motivated to improve their social standing.)

We live in a much more complex society where social standing can mean a lot of things. You could derive personal satisfaction from having the respect of your peers (especially important for scientists) you could also derive satisfaction from your family recognizing the worth of you having raised a family of your own.

Fame and wealth definitely figure into that measure of social standing, but there are many more kinds of social standing, some of which can be almost completely independent of each other.

Money, as I said, is the root of consumption. The desire for it is what creates the advertising ecosystem that drives a consumption based lifestyle.

You have to keep buying/consuming for the money to keep flowing, which is what matters to the corporate elite. However this lifestyle, neither offers fulfilment nor adequate time with you family.

Now money may have some value if applied correctly to allow for smoother trade. However in matters of trade it is still unnecessary. Trade can function without money, and money itself aught to be treated as unimportant. As too should the vast majority of crap that companies shovel out in order to turn a profit. Else we end up with what is still a very materialistic lifestyle.

A lifestyle which spins out of a currency based system of exchange, where you no longer need to place your own value on an object. Because in placing your own value on an object you realize what that objects intrinsic worth is to you. Which is why bartering is a better system of trade, it demands you consider what the object is worth without simply reading it off a price tag and handing over a bundle of abstract paper.