I got a lot to read over. Well, here goes...
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why has noone noticed that raistlin is a closet communist? his claim that life should not be judged by money is so close to marxist philosophy it's scary.
Hardly. Communism is based around money being the measure of one's worth.
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captalism is based on the idea that money is your rewardin life. you do a good job you get paid more. it is the ojne reward of a captalist system more work = more money. while not always true in a captalist society as one man can do less work and earn more money, land owners for instance, inheriters. but that is beside the point really. the reward in a capatalist society is money, that's what the economic theory is actually based around. that people want more money so they want to succeed more which makes the world go round. pure captalism used to be followed in britain in the victorian age and indutrial revolution. it is in essence laissez-faire.
Under a capitalist system, your reward is the product of your efforts; basically, that you're responsible for the fruits of your labor, good or bad. The philosophy behind that is that the individual is the most important part of a society, that each person's life is an end in and of itself(and of value in and of itself), that ability, success is encouraged, that each person's life is their own, yadda yadda yadda.
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each man is rewarded with money. in the above example though who has the power? the big wig. we decides what wage he pays his worker and so how much money he makes. laissez-faire tells us that no matter if he chooses to pay his workers more than a pound a day or keeps the money to himself benefits society.
The workers have the power to protest, quit, strike, or go along with their jobs. The job owner only has the power that the workers let him have. Same theory behind democractic governments.
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so the goverment decided that it might be a good idea for the government to do stuff. so it made a sanitation system. and people didn't get cholera. it forced health and safety and people didn't get their hands stuck in machines anymore. it forced minimum wage and people no longer went hungry. death was done to the liassez-faire policy and mr big wig lost some of his power.
Sanitation systems are under the state's power, and is not socialist. The regulations for those in jobs may be, but why can't the workers and the employers work that out for themselves?
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however his money continued to grow and at a much faster rate than his workers. so he regained his power. and the workers were not happy. they believed that they work harder than mr big wig but he had more money. in effect they made mr biug wigs money and without them he was up the creek. the idea formed that the worker was more important than the owner. without them the company would fail.
Effort does grant you the claim to your money. Ability does.
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each job is as important as the other.
True, as it is in capitlism: you can't have the "big wigs" without the workers. The "big wigs" only have the power that the workers grant him with their consent. "Power" is a very dependent term.
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communism belives like raistlin does that money was not how people should be rewarded for what they do.
That's not what I said at all. I said that money is not a measure of man's value, and therefore who has the money and who doesn't is irrelevent. Communism maintains, logically, that for everyone's life to be of equal value, they must all have the same amount of money, whether it's earned or not. The idea of life being of value in and of itself is the antithesis of communism.
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it gave people a sense of purpose. in communist russia this was the war effort. the idea was that all work needed to be done, all people could do different things and all people were equal and would be rewarded equally. of course this would still need to be done by money as tghat is the way the world works. but at the same time people would gain pride in their work, working together for the good of the community. not for their purely for their won gain. however they will be rewarded in themselves.
It gives purpose for people who have no purpose. It grants security to insecure people. It grants the unearned to the lazy and mediocre. It pushes down those that don't want to live how they're told.
The idea that society is of more importance than the individual is one of the most evil ideas in the world. NOTHING is more important than the individual. Therefore, "for the good of the community" is nonsense. The only life that matters is mine, and what I rationally choose to do. If I want to be a doctor or lawyer or artist or musician, that's my choice. If I want to try to be rich or content to stay lower-class, that's my choice. If I want to try to be the best or content to stay mediocre, that's my choice. Nobody has the right to live MY life.
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raistlin hinted at htis point when he said money is not how a man should be judge nor should it be his reward. this idea is actually a marxist one. not capatalist. the reward in capatalism is money. and more money than others.
Nonsense. Communism states that the life of the individual is NOT of value in itself, and that money is the measure of man's worth. Capitalism ideals are that life is of value in and of itself, and money does not measure one's worth.
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I am not a communist, I do not defend communism, I just think it to be a better system than capitalism. I just don't want to explain because I have done it so many times in this forum...I already got tired. Plus, as said before, it would require a lot.
I don't wish to start giving pro-communist argumentations for the simple reason I can't see we are talking about the same thing, so this would lead to misunderstanding. And as explained before, it would take a lot of typing from my part. And no, frankly, I can't make short, concise simplifications. I was never good at that. I can cite my sources, not because I attempt to justify my opinion at verecundiam, but to attempt to explain this sources have been manipulated through history. And to be a pedant, and I'm damn good at that.
"Sorry, I don't feel like typing it all out, but I'll type out a lot of irrelevent stuff instead."
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However, I can try to explain the problems in your views of capitalism. For example, this whole concept of freedom. The first step for freedom is to free the mind, if you are alienated you will never be really free. Capitalism needs to create this alienation, the market needs production, prduction needs consumers, thus we create a consumerist world, so we develop advertisments shoved down the throat of the citizens through all the damn place. Make them wish for things to buy, because this makes the corporations more succesful. And in capitalism, the corporations are the rulers. Whats the problem with being poor in capitalism? That you are forced to climb up for something superior, you are preassured constantly, everywhere, by precious smiling faces feeding you materialistic wish. If people don't consume, capitalism sinks. You are free to choose another type of life? How free? Consider for a moment how free is that person, how many possibilities of moving out of a crappy routinary life he or she has.
Coorporations only have the power that the workers and the people give them voluntarily. If people don't "consume," then the cooporation either changes, or bankrupts. It's competitive. To succeed requires effort, requires thought, requires choice. That is freedom. Freedom = choice, allowing each person to have choice, allowing each person the right to their own mind. Communism allows no such choice.
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By the way, for capitalism to work, we need extreme inequality. Some people have to work for others to succeed, some people have to fail for others to succeed. If the competence fails, then thats good for you. In capitalist mindset, being poor is bad, because you are forced to work for someone, and probably your work will be alienating, in the end you will be not doing what you wish to do.
Inequality only if you view money and this nonexistant term of "power" as the measures of one's worth. I don't. Capitalism doesn't, either. Why is working for someone bad? Why is being poor bad? Does being poor lessen the value of your life? Capitalism states that, if you're poor and you don't want to be poor, you must make the choice to become greater, and make the choice to put in the effort. Communism states that, if you're poor, you don't need to do anything, and everything will be handed to you, whether you try or not.
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A mind is not always free. It develops in a society, the experience affects it. When the experience reduces and manipulates the conscience, you have to be very lucky to move away from it. That is called alienation. And that happens a lot in capitalism.
No, you don't have to be lucky - you just have to think. The mind is always free unless that freedom is given up voluntarily. Many people voluntarily give up the freedom of their mind, and they're not worthy of my pity or of handouts. The betrayal of your life, of your self-value, of your mind, is the worst form of betrayal.
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pure captalism would be freedom. but freedom only for the upper class. the owners. for the workers it would be oppression in it's greatest sense. to create a laissez-faire society would be the biggest mistakes of all time.
Again, only if you measure one's worthy by money and power. Any person who places life as a value in and of itself, transcendent of money, would disagree. "Power" is a very dependent term: the people "in power" are more dependent on the people below them than those people are on them. If some big cooporation does something the people don't like, the people are free to either go along with their lives, protest, boycott, or strike. "The only thing required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." If those good men do nothing, then it's not the coorporation's fault.
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if every employer could pay what it wanted? it would be going back 150 years. pure capitalism or laissez-faire would truly suck.
Only for the weak-minded people of communism. Also, true laissez-faire capitalism hasn't really existed yet.
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it would be a dictatorship of the beurgiose.
No, it would be the ultimate system of checks-and-balances, while preserving the freedom of choice(again, no other type of freedom exists).
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What I was getting at was more how a society would end up seeing those with money vs. those who don't. Specifically the government. It always has and always will take money to get elected. So when you raise your "war chest" to go and convince people to vote for you, you will go to the rich people because they have the money. Of course they won't give you any if you work against their interests. As a result politicians will naturally favor causes that help the rich even if they hurt the poor.
Then why did the Democrats propose a helluva lot of pro-poor ideas in the last election? Kerry didn't seem to be "bought out my the rich."
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But at the end of the day without money, your life will be harder than with it.
So?
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It isn't so much that a person sees dollar signs looking in the mirror, just that they understand that at the end of the month the grocery store and their landlord expect to see some form of currency rather than a warm fuzzy statement about how much of a developed person they are. It isn't a question of "I mean less to society because I'm poor", it's a question of practicallity.
But people don't think that way. People spend way beyond their means, with credit cards and such. If people did life within their means, it would be entirely possible to survive with a minimum of income, and pure survival is the only real good of money. The rest is irrelevent, and shouldn't matter.
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I think what devalues human life is to have no connection to their own souls. That can happen even if you live in the forest hunting squirrels in a loincloth. Money has little to do with it.
I don't know exactly what you mean by that. What devalues human life is to measure the value of your life with external means: money, power, fame, religion, community, donations, grades, whatever. Money has nothing to do with it. Capitalism would agree with that. Communism wouldn't.
