Eating the meat of abused animals.

Thought experiment #2

I often hear about the need to create jobs. OR, worse still, that such and such store is laying off X number of employees. As if this is a bad thing. Think about this: What would be the ultimate form of society? Could it take a form whereby no one has to have a job and all people are afforded the luxury to pursue any interests they may have? That they could possess whatever it is they would like? Suppose robots were able to perform all duties humans are presently required to do?

Is this a good thing?

When the supermarket replaces cashiers with self-service item scanners, isn't this preferable? Through technology we are able to replace a human with a machine allowing that human to go off and do something that is productive - thus making society more productive and more prosperous.

What should that person do?

Shouldn't it be something that is of value to society? If so, then it can only be uncovered through a capitalistic market driven economy where that person is able to be of benefit to society or offer a service that is desired.

Only someone cynical would think it better to keep the human in the mundane task of scanning items - as if this was their total worth to society. AND, if it is, doesn't that suggest that something is wrong with such a society? Example: The poorly functioning state-run public education system? I mean, if a person can attend a State run school for nearly two decades and ONLY acquire the skills to scan an item across a screen, well, that's a damning indictment of public education.

Something to think about when next you do your grocery shopping and walk past the meat of an abused animal.....

 

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No it's not.

Case in point. The ridiculously high percentage of blacks in prison. That's due to State violence working against the free market. The State passes drug laws that penalize drug users (whom are mostly white). Then the State targets blacks - destroying their lives along with their community.

Portugal legalized ALL drugs before entering the EU (where the State forced them to recriminalize them). What happened was drug use when down. Crime went down. Money was saved and better used for other productive endeavors, the crime syndicates went bust.

It seems to me you're confounding Capitalism with Socialism! You seem to have the two turned totally around!

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Did you know that the $50 note in your wallet is actually $50 worth of debt. Probably the exact opposite of what you were thinking. You may use it as if it were value, but, really it's a promissory note to pay you $50 in the future. Funny huh? It's actually terribly serious as it's destroying the society you live in with debt. We don't really live in a capitalistic society. We live in a socialist pen on a debt-Farm.

 

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That is not correct, we've seen economies (alveit small ones) that were purely communistic (no government) in communes and on kibbutzes, we've had highly regulated states, we've have states with low regulation. We've never really had a pure example of a laissez faire state, but I wouldnj't advocate for one.

It's certainly not been totalitarianism and capitalism only (though even that is mixing apples and oranges as totalitarianism is a political order and capitalism is an economic one, so I take "totalitarianism" to mean "heavy central planning"). We have had many examples that were a mix between state planning and individual planning, certainly.

Here's the rub, I never said "free markets are awesome." I merely said that imagining a world that lacks capitalism and free markets, but still has efficient (low cost) food production, is to imagine a non-existent utopia. It simply won't exist (or at least, it could exist but there's no way for it to persist in the long term). That doesn't make free markets "great," but it does put them in a position of pareto optimality. You can imagine governments with greater economic equality, but at the cost of higher price levels and lower overall economic prosperity (and those could also be pareto optimal solutions).

I value prosperity enough, relative to economic equality, that I would say that free markets ideology is, to steal from Churchill, the worst way to organize an economy, except for all the others. You are an advocate of at least some of those "others". It may be a perfectly reasonable position to hold, but don't imagine that it will be an improvement in every way from the system we have not. It will almost certainly feature greater economic equality, at the cost of everyone on average being at least a little worse off.

Practical, real world, evidence suggests that you cannot simply take from the top earners, leave the middle class in the same economic position they are now, and use what you got from the upper class to improve the lot of the poor, so that too is a common utopian fantasy that needs to be abandoned (not that you necessarily share in that). It sounds good, but it only works in the static analysis. In the real, and dynamic, world, incentives matters, and if you attempt to subsidize the poor by taking from the wealthy, you get less effort being put in by people at all levels. The soviets tried to counter this by educating people in a way that inculcated a sense of a duty to work to the best of one's ability, but that duty never took root. So near as I can tell, we're very strongly inclined to respond to incentives and, in the absence of a personal incentive, to slack off (relative to our potential "best" work product) when no one is looking.

In my opinion, it will take a major technological event to provide us with a ststem more efficient than free market capitalism. It may be that, some day, we will have AI sophisticated enough to gather local information (on the level of each individual), learn each individual's preferences, feed that data, in total, to a central AI, and then that central AI will be able to, in real time, process all that information and "centrally plan" the economy better than individuals could. (That is since the great flaws in central planning are: (i) insufficient detail about local problems, resources and issues, (ii) insufficient knowledge of the individual preferences of everyone affected by the economy, (iii) related, an inability to process data that is too detailed and (iv) an inability to adapt a plan in real time based on changes occurring at a local level...and a sufficiently powerful and disbursed AI can in principle solve those.) It's possible in principle...but I would not hold my breath.

(Plus, there would be no way for a human to intelligently intervene in such a system—a human couldn't process a millionth of the data the AI would need and would need weeks or months to analyse even their tiny part of the info, by which time the info would be dated—so any input a human had would be based on laughably incomplete and out-of-date view of things. And that is not to mention that a human's input would likely be biased in favor of certain groups. I don't see us ever turning things over to machines in that way. Even if the singularity comes and gives us the processing power and speed we need, political bias would always be an issue.)

 

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I dispute that. I understand why you think that, but paper money is more aptly understood as a recognized medium of exchange rather than as a promissory note.

To steal an economic puzzle:

Imagine a slow day in a small town. Times are tough. Everyone in the town is in debt.

One day a rich tourist from New York City is driving through. The tourist is tired, but is persnickety about where he sleeps. He stops at the town's hotel and lays a $50 bill on the reception counter, saying he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs to determine if any of them are suitable for him to sleep in.

As soon as the tourist steps into the elevator, the hotel owner grabs the $50 bill and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher.

The butcher takes the $50 and runs down the street to retire his debt to the farmer from whom the butcher bought livestock.

The farmer takes the $50 and heads off to pay his bill at the feed store.

The owner of the feed store takes the $50 and runs to pay his debt to the local prostitute, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer her services to her better customers on credit.

The prostitute, in a flash, rushes to the hotel and pays off her $50 room bill with the hotel owner.

The hotel proprietor now places the $50 back on the counter so the rich traveler will not suspect anything.

At that moment the traveler comes down the stairs, picks up the $50 bill, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, pockets the money & leaves.

Now, no one produced anything of value. No one earned anything. However the whole town is out of debt and is looking to the future with much optimism. How does that work​

In a very real sense that single $50 bill *cancelled* $250 is outstanding debt when it circulated through the town ($300 is you assume the hotel owner "owed" $50 to the tourist when the tourist left the $50 bill as a down payment). How did that work?

The answer is that no one's wealth changed at all. The hotel owner owed $50 to the butcher (a liability), but he was owed $50 by the prostitute (an asset), after the bill circulated, both his debt and his receivable were zeroed out. What the presence of the $50 bill allowed was for everyone to use that medium of exchange as a way to clear their debts efficiently. In fact the same result could have been achieved if the hotel owner went to the butcher and reached an agreement to cancel the hotel owners debt in exchange for the hotel owner agreeing to take on the butcher's debt to the farmer, then gone to the farmer and repeated the process and so on. The problem with that is that an agreement to take on a debt is a relatively complex thing (credit risks vary from person to person and are relevant in such cases, and there's generally more paperwork and due diligence involved).

The $50 bill, as a recognized medium of exchange acts as a riskless clearing mechanism. And that's why we use them.

If you really take the "debt" analogy seriously, you run into an obvious problem: a $50 bill is not a promise to pay you later (it may once have been back when the federal government would exchange them for gold or silver, but there is no one promising you anything any more). If you believe that then the only reason to rely on tye value of a $50 bill is your belief that you won't be the last guy holding that bill before people stop accepting it (a version of the "bigger idiot theory" though perhaps best described as a belief that you'll be able to find an idiot of approximately the same magnitude as yourself since the value is a static $50).

Since we all both spend and receive cash all the time, though, no one is living as if they believe the end is nigh.

 

I disagree with you that its the best system apart from all the others, a HYBRID system maybe the best we have but those advocating for a straight market such as michael are simply delusional. if it hadnt been for goverment the world would have colapsed like dominos after lemen brothers and the best way to prove this is to look at the only country which wasnt in recession, Australia. We have some of the strongest regulations in the world AND the goverment acted agressivoly to protect the finantial system, consumer cinfidence and the other levels of goverment which prpvide the services. Remove those regulations and we would be in the shit too.

 

It's true it's used as if it were gold, but it's not gold. It's debt.

I may be wrong but let's go back to you're analogy.

Imagine that it's not a $50 bill but a $0.05 cents. Everyone is in deeply in debt to the tune of $50. The money must be circulated around and around and around and around many many many times before everyone gets to handle it enough times to pay back the other. In order to do this everyone has to work very very very productively.

Take the Hooker.
The hooker was turning a trick a week and then returning to her family and no one knew any better. Now she's turning tricks all day every day with any tom dick or harry that'll pay. She's drinking and doing drugs and anti-depressants to get by and her family life is gone to hell. Likewise, the Hotel owner is renting to hookers because they need the space. Long gone is the families that frequently visited his hotel. He figures he can pay his debt selling drugs to the hookers and buy tricks from them in return. The farmer makes more than apples. He's also got a tidy little profit from selling the drugs to the hotel owner who tricks out the whores.

Why is everyone so deeply in debt?
That's where (I think?) the fact that $50 is not money, but, a promise to pay money in the future actually comes into effect.

We are so deeply in debt we need to circulate that $0.05 many many many times to pay back the $50 (plus interest). Mostly that money goes to the bank to be reissued as MORE debt. See, you have to go to the bank to get legal money. The bank only makes money when it issues debt and reclaims the payments. It issues way more money than it has. It can issue 10 times more money then it actually has on it's books. Now we have a society of debt-Serfs slaving for the people who issue the debt. Hence, I like to think of the Cattle analogy. If you've ever know a very wealthy banking family, you may find they think of some types of people as Cattle. I'm not sure if they see themselves as Farmers.

What do you think?

When the USA sells bonds to China, it's the productivity of the Cattle that the Chinese are buying. Yet, listen to the Government yammer away we NEED to raise the debt ceiling. AKA: We're selling your milk and we need good little Cattle all in rows in the pens being milked. People think they're getting "services" from their government - they're actually be sold BY their government.


I think we should have nationalized the banks in 2008. Secured all bank deposits as a penance for our ignorance. Sent most banking CEOs to either the poor house or the big house. Liquified the debt. Got rid of the banking monopoly. But, much like the Iraq Lie / WMD the media screamed we'd be living in the "Stone Age" (talk about hyperbole) if we didn't shift those $Trillions (with a T) of dollars of debt onto the backs of the middle class.


Ben Bernanke was again giving in a prestitute media event and wondering why things weren't working but assuring everyone it will all work out - just as long as we can swallow a few more mouthfuls of debt. You know, to fatten us up for the milking machine. Don't be surprised when we read that people are starting to put their kids to work to get the money needed to pay their debts. Give it another year or so.

 

Talk about eating the meat of abused animals - one may want to take notice of the American Cattle.... errr public.

 

More like sheeple...as for the video..nothing i haven't seen before, heck i've eaten meat products while watching videos like that..didn't phase me at all. Pork is Pork.. Beef is Beef Chicken is Chicken all taste delicious and i've got to eat.

 

The irony is that when personal preference to one's crude instincts (such as "it tastes nice") over ride any ethical consideration ( such as "i can eat the stuff even when watching how the animals are subject to abominable and excessively cruel treatment") one effectively becomes one of the "sheeple"

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Actually, I htink that many people eat meat not because they would like it (although they may develop a taste for it later), but because not eating meat comes with a heavy social stigma. And people, of course, wish to avoid social stigma.

 

Huh? Vegetarians are a persecuted group or something, really? I thought the point of eating meat is that it is a really easy way to get protien, plus it tastes good. You don't need to 'develope' a taste for meat. First time I minced up a steak and gave it to my son was the last day he would eat baby food!

 

Not everyone has the same tastes.

 

That is true, but the idea that people who don't eat meat must bear a heavy social stigma is silly.

 

The free market

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Communism:

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Or for a more wide angle view, compare North Korea to South Korea:

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IDK man, communism sure has alot of booze at the end of that isle!

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Nice try mad that piture could have been taken in any country

and what difference if the shelves are full if no one can aford it?

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Right, no one can afford food in evil capitalist countries, which is why obesity is more common among the poor than the affluent

 

and that comment proves you have no idea what your talking about

 

oh and then there is this (same link)

 

Your reply did not address obesity amoung those below the poverty line.

There is very little verifiable starvation in the United States. There may be, and is, more poverty than ever before, but those in poverty are being fed, which is something which has never before occured. Capitalism has resulted in more food feeding more people than ever before in history.