@Sic - some of your "doesn't hurt people" examples are bogus. Setting fires? Fires spread and put people at risk, not just property. Look to the California wildfires for an example. And what if someone is trapped in the building you accidently set on fire from the car you torched? Window breaking. Do you break windows in houses? If so, you could accidently hurt someone.

Now, your definition of violence means it must hurt someone to be violent. Some definitions do refer to injury or harm, but others refer to destructive actions.

Merriam Webster's third definition of violence.
3 a : intense, turbulent, or furious and often destructive action or force

@ Draugnar: By the way, you have not responded to a question I previously posted (a couple of hours previously) so I am going to post it here again - the thread was moving very fast at that point so you may have missed this:

@ Draugnar:

"You are wrong in thinking that communism allows any company to make money."

Sorry, I'm confused. Where did I say that I thought this?



The reason I've posted this again is that by saying to me ""You are wrong in thinking that communism allows any company to make money" you are arguing against a point I never even made - leading me to assume that you have misunderstood me.

Sicarius +1

I could quibble with some of that, but it needs to be said. And I follow Gandhi in trying to act with ahimsa, but I try to keep perspective when others choose differently.

@ draugnar.
I agree my analysis isn't perfect, but I really feel your grasping at straws here.

C'mon Draugnar, aren't you going to explain? I'm pretty sure you've misquoted me, you see.

Bounce

Draugnar?

Oh well if Draugnar isn't going to clarify what he said, I'll just have to respond to it the best I can:

@ Draugnar: "You are wrong in thinking that communism allows any company to make money".

Communism is not about allowing companies to make money, so I certainly don't think that. Companies (other than the very smallest one-man enterprises) are set up as a means of pooling capital in order to undertake some commercial activity, with the purpose of making a profit for the original investors or subsequent shareholders should the company issue stock. Private companies cause a number of problems for society, but chiefly the problem is that they concentrate economic and productive power in the hands of people who are motivated by greed and profit, not the interests of the community. The larger a firm becomes, the more this is a problem.

Under communism the major productive forces of the economy would not be in the hands of intrinsically greedy private firms.

@Jamie - sorry, been off playing WoW most of the weekend and barely did any postings here, just game checking and negotiations. Anyhow, when I wortethat was when you were talking about having luxuries. you have since clarified that everyone would have the equivalent luxuries, whihc precludes the accumulation of wealth such as a corporation would make. So, in your clarified philosophy, I see that companies wouldn't make money.

Now, this is wrong on so many levels it is hard to get into. But first and foremost, contribution should be valued and rewarded. All needs should be met, but a ditch digger should not be allowed to drive a Corvette any more than I should be allowed to drive a Lamborghini. My contribution doesn't warrant the Lambo (but it does the Vette as well as a 4x4 SUV). His might warrant the SUV (not my place to say). But that fact is there is intrinsic value in skill and intellect and you cannot legistlate the desire to get ahead out of people.

You must admit that, until attitudes and mores change radically, there is no way a communistic society could work. A socially responsible capitalistic society, however, is more acheivable in that the change is not as great to get to social responsibility in the corporate world as most people, as individuals, would agree that we have a certain responsibility to the handicapped (physical, mental, whatever) and to eliminate poverty. there are some who don't, but the great majority do.

@Sic - I was pointing out the flaw in your logic. Not all violence has to hurt a person or even another living being. If it is destructive, it is violence. Setting cars on fire, breaking windows, tossing trash cans, tagging walls. They are destructive and fit the definition of violence. No straws grasped. It's just a fact.

thats semantics brother. we all know a tsumani can be 'violent', but certainly not in the same way as an abusive spouse is violent. So there are certainly different kinds of violence. I think we can all agree that smashing a window, and bombing a country are on vastly different levels.
after all a window doesnt feel fear or pain or pepper spray.

so while you may technically be right, you're still grasping at straws. certainly smashing a window is destructive, but violent in the same way that a rapist is violent? hardly.

@ Draugnar:

>All needs should be met, but a ditch digger should not be allowed to drive a Corvette any more than I should be allowed to drive a Lamborghini. My contribution doesn't warrant the Lambo (but it does the Vette as well as a 4x4 SUV). His might warrant the SUV (not my place to say).

It's not your place to say that a ditch digger is allowed an SUV, but it is your place to say that this person is not allowed a Corvette?

>you cannot legistlate the desire to get ahead out of people

Legislation —and more generally, the accepted property relations in society— can have an effect on how that desire is played out. In most foraging (hunter-gatherer) societies, the desire to get ahead is channelled into the desire to give the largest gifts to the most people. When you start dividing land into private property and people see their own land —rather than the whole world— as the source of their prosperity, then it gets channelled into the desire to hold the most land. In our modern industrial society, where most people have no land to speak of, we tend to channel this into the desire to have the most stuff, in a broad sense of ‘stuff’ … although for some people, this is a very virtual sense, such as a diverse music collection, or a large amount of WoW gold.

I agree with you that one can't simply legislate this. But there are many ways that the desire to beat one's neighbours can be played out, and a society's rules of property have a huge effect.

@ Sicarius:

What I particularly liked about your post was that it phrased the question like this:
>certainly smashing a window is destructive, but violent in the same way that a cop beating up a guy is violent? hardly.
(quoting Sicarius and John Steinbeck)

Or in other words, two wrongs don't make a right (as my parents used to say, and maybe yours and Draugnar's too); and even more so, one wrong followed by one greater wrong definitely doesn't make a right!

@ Draugnar: "So, in your clarified philosophy, I see that companies wouldn't make money."

They wouldn't make money because most of them wouldn't exist! The economic system I support is not based around private firms, and indeed the forming of larger private companies would be outlawed.


"a ditch digger should not be allowed to drive a Corvette any more than I should be allowed to drive a Lamborghini"

This statement is absurd, and doubly so coming from you as a supporter of capitalism. Surely if you believe in (albeit responsible) capitalism, you must believe that if the ditch-digger works enough overtime, lives frugally and saves up his surplus money for many years, he would eventually be able to buy that Lamborghini he has always dreamed of?

Are you actually arguing for a system of highly-regimented socio-economic classes in which the government (or if not them, who else?) issued diktats prescribing who could live in which street, own which car, etc?

And someone called me a fascist for MY beliefs!

No, I'm saying that rewarding a ditch digger equally with the same effective luxuries as an IT Manager is inherently unfair. He has every right to drive a Corvette if he earns it, but in your communism, you can't earn it. It is always distributed equally when it comes to luxuries. THAT is where the unfairness comes in. You have already said luxuries would be equally (as in equivalent or comparable) distributed. So if he wants a Lamborghini, as long as everyone else has the option to select a Lamborghini as their fun car, he can have it. There is no impetus to work hard and earn even more in a communist society. So, a 40-hour a week ditch digger and a 40-hour a week IT Manager will have the same (equivalent) luxuries. That does not work for me.

Is rewarding a football player with a Lamborghini fairer than rewarding a ditch digger with the same Lamborghini?

Most of that last applies to Jamie, but it applies in a sense to Toby's post as well. I am not passing jusdgement on anyone in a capitalistic society. They work hard, put in the hours, get the overtime, move into management, whatever, they can drive anything they can afford. But Jamie says all luxuries will be distributed equally to all. That is not a fair system.

@Sic - you said theyweren't violent (an obsolute). I'm not saying some violence isn't more violent than others, I'm just saying your claim to being non-violent when you break a window is bullshit and I'm calling you on it.

@Draugnar
Can you show that a ditch digger contributes less to society than an IT Manager?

The market shows it. If we really needed ditches for whatever reason then a ditch-digger could be pulling down a six-figure salary, but as it is they're paid far less than that. It's probably still a decent, union job but it's hardly what an IT manager would make.

Computer science is really hard and really important and if the guy went to school to get a CS degree and is responsible for a company's servers or whatever he deserves to be compensated well. There's nothing wrong with that and there never will be.

@DarioD - have you read the whole thread with regards to communism? Until you do and actually have something other than a smart ass comment to contribute, please don't waste my time.

@abgemacht - can you show he doesn't? I can show that, in the real world (aka a flawed capitalist world), society thinks the IT Manager contributes more as his compensation is considerably higher.

@Invictus - thank you.

@Draugnar/Invictus

I'll admit trying to continue with the Ditch Digger example to prove my point wasn't the best option.

What about teachers? The US is in desperate need of them and yet they don't seem to get compensated as well. Perhaps this is one of the examples of how our current system is flawed, in which case I'll try to go back in the thread and find your posts.

@Draugnar: that was not at all a smart ass comment. There is no such thing as absolute value of one's work to society, and even if there was one, capitalism wouldn't be the best example of a society recognising it. Why are some singers, actors, football players earning more than your average IT manager? Was Michael Jackson's contribution to society 1.000.000 times more valuable than that of the average doctor?

Incidentally, I consider the argument of the basketball player as produced by Nozick to be one of the most convincing arguments against any kind of communist society, so it's funny that you should reject it ;)

Capitalism determines the market value, how much people are willing to pay, rather than some intrinsic value. It doesn't pretend to determine the moral worth of a person or object, just what that person's work or that object 's monetary value is.

You could argue a rabbi contributes more to society than a mechanic, but to a Catholic with a broken car the rabbi is worthless.

Invictus, the problem is that for some professions, there isn't a direct way to determine the market value. Teachers, for instance, can't have their market value determined until a child becomes an adult. If your kids have all sub-par teachers, you probably won't know it, society won't know it, until we've got a generation of dumb kids. So over time, we might start paying more, but it doesn't help a generation of dumb kids.

@ Invictus. Yes, that was my point. You can argue that letting the market decide the value of someone's job (or goods) is the most effective way of ensuring that society produces the goods and skills that are most needed (the famous "invisible hand"), and I may agree under certain conditions. But I don't think that you can argue that the resulting distribution of wealth and resources ensures "fairness".

Dario, I think you may need to explain that a little further. If someone is worth more, as shown by the value of their job, if their job is more valuable, why is the resulting distribution of wealth not fair? The more valuable people get more stuff.

Having it be directly planned by fallible and corruptible people is even more unfair.

Teachers are so bad in America because the Teacher's Union has forced a system which bases pay on tenure rather than quality. It's nearly impossible to fire a teacher with tenure, since the unions will ALWAYS take the teacher's side and school districts often don't want to waste resources fighting to kick the teacher out. A teacher in my middle school was caught banging another teacher in a science lab and they just moved him up to the high school. If anything, teachers are an example of how not using the free market to determine pay leads to serious problems, rather than an example of capitalism's flaws.

OK several things to deal with here, not necessarily in chronological order:

@Invictus: "The market shows it"

The market shows it? The market be damned. The labour market shows only how little firms motivated by greed are able to get away with paying the workers they exploit. Of course there is less profit to be made from digging ditches than 'delivering IT solutions' so yes the ditch-digger is paid less. But ditches still need digging. Would the IT manager give up his job and start digging ditches if the ditch-digger got a pay rise? No he wouldn't! He would still find his IT job more mentally satisfying, and he would realise that digging ditches is a dirty, physically demanding job.

Money is not the only reward in life, and if you can't see that then I feel sorry for you.


@Draugnar: "He has every right to drive a Corvette if he earns it, but in your communism, you can't earn it. It is always distributed equally when it comes to luxuries. THAT is where the unfairness comes in."

You haven't been listening to me, have you? You still have to work hard to get rewards. If they both work hard and do a good job WHY is it "fair" for one to be rewarded more than the other?

@Draugnar:"@abgemacht - can you show he doesn't? I can show that, in the real world (aka a flawed capitalist world), society thinks the IT Manager contributes more as his compensation is considerably higher."

That's not what abgemacht was asking you, Draugnar.

@DBJ: "Invictus, the problem is that for some professions, there isn't a direct way to determine the market value. Teachers, for instance..."

I totall agree, and this holds true for many other vital professions.

I am arguing that under capitalism the market price does not reflect the "value" of a job, it reflects the "demand" for that job. This ensures that society reacts quickly and effectively to external events, producing the goods that are needed. For example, if there is a strong demand for plumbers, plumbers will be paid more and more people will become plumber (thus lowering the average salary of a plumber and bringing the market back in equilibrium).
But while this system is probably the most effective in terms of maximising wealth production (at least under certain conditions), it is not in its nature to ensure "fairness". The fact that singers and actors are paid disproportionately more than teachers or doctors should be evidence of that. Or, let's take sportsmen: is a baseball player inherently better than a soccer player? Is his contribution to society more valuable? I would say not, but a baseball player will probably be paid much more than a soccer player in the US. Vice versa in Europe, where a soccer player will be paid tens on times more than a baseball player. This reflects market demand only, not "value".