Failed State - Breadlines of Capitalism

Discussion in 'Latest US & World News' started by Horhey, Nov 19, 2020.

  1. Oh Yeah

    Oh Yeah Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Your answer Crank reminds me when I was 22 and only had enough money to buy a large bag of rice and two cans of Campbell soup. I split the bag of rice and mixed it with one can of vegetable soup and when that was finished mixed the other can with mushroom soup and rice. That was my dinner for two weeks. I could have went and seen my parents, I guess, but back then we were to prideful to ask for help. I rejoined the Navy and must say I have never gone hungry again. Came close a couple times but a pot of pinto beans or a pot of chili is so much better. Maybe we learn to cook better as we grow up. I'm still a stew or chicken and dumpling type of guy over steak and potatoes.
     
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  2. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    In the USA and most advanced countries outside the tropics, it's homemade sourdough bread and beans. Ordinary all-purpose white flour is a fraction of the price of rice per kg, and has more protein. If you have a working kitchen with a stove, you can keep a family of four fed on $1/day. For $2/day you can have some variety, some vegetables, etc.
    Or starchy roots like manioc/cassava/potatoes.
    No, that would be the paleo and keto diets.
    Agreed. The "food" whose consumption is most highly correlated with obesity is sugar-sweetened soda, which also happens to be among the most overpriced -- i.e., whose retail price is the largest multiple of its production cost. There is a reason Warren Buffett loves his large stake in Coca-Cola.
     
    Last edited: Nov 26, 2020
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  3. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    Exactly. Go to any brutally poor place and I guarantee no one is eating McDon@lds. They're eating rice/beans, with maybe an egg laid by their own chickens (which are in turn fed scraps, so very cheap to run), and a handful of whatever vegetable is free or cheap and readily available. They're not drinking soda, or beer - they're drinking water. And guess what .. no one is obese!

    I have no idea why these folk have such a strong need to blame obesity on poverty - though at a guess they've been seduced by the fat-acceptance movement into blaming anything but the individual. Fits with the Progressive premise of nil personal responsibility.
     
    Last edited: Nov 26, 2020
  4. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    Agree with all of that except the keto thing. The thinnest people are not eating a protein and fat rich diet. They're eating a high carb low protein diet. All societies which consume large amounts of protein are fatter than those which don't - when you take humans as a whole, and throughout history.

    EG look at Arctic peoples, who exist on very high protein diets .. all 'chubby' by comparison to equatorial and other groups with much less protein and fat in their diets.
     
  5. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Because they are the ones who don't have enough food, period, and carbs are a lot cheaper. It's all they can afford.
    Because high-protein societies are almost always more affluent, where almost everyone has all the food they want.
    No, arctic peoples only look chubby because they need insulating fat layers on their extremities to survive. There are tropical populations like the Polynesians that are fatter than arctic peoples.
     
  6. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    Yes, that's the point. They eat a very high protein/high fat diet.

    Polynesians also eat a very high protein/high fat diet. They're also famous for being very ... ah ... relaxed - such is the easy bounty of their island homes.
     
  7. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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  8. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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  9. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Source?
     
  10. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    Look it up. Plenty of info.

    Meantime, the other feature of Polynesians which is fairly unique, is their sedentary lifestyle. That's not new, either - it's a function of life in these small, isolated, non-agricultural societies, in climates where abundance is certain and predation is limited. Very few societies have that, or have ever had that.
     
    Last edited: Nov 26, 2020
  11. Poohbear

    Poohbear Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Well a few of my friends hold tens of thousands of hectares of land here in South Australia, You need that land
    because it's called "dry farming." If this land was a commons there wouldn't be any farming upon it.
    I rent a house here. I have no resentment of my landlady - she spent the money to build the house and I pay for
    the privilege of using it.
    I also own a small river block. From time to time I rent that as well to holiday folks. Soon I hope to get back the
    money I spent in building that unit.
    The Catholic Church 'owned' one third of Europe, and Communism 'owned' 100% of the land of countries it ruled
    over. These are not the same thing.
     
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  12. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    That's just objectively false. If farming is the most productive potential use of that land, and the holder had to pay the market land rent to the community of those he deprives of their liberty to use it, then he would have to farm it in order to avoid losing money. Moreover, if the community was able to recover the additional land rent that hydrological projects create instead of having to give it away to private landowners in return for nothing, it would be profitable for it to improve the water supply, enabling and economically compelling even more productive farming. Your claims are the exact, diametric opposite of the truth.
    You also pay her just for permission to access the desirable public services and infrastructure your taxes already paid for. Why do you want to pay for government twice so that she can pocket one of the payments in return for nothing?
    Shocker!
    I'm not a fan of either.

    There has been no private ownership of land in Hong Kong for over 160 years. Yet it has consistently ranked at the top of lists of the freest and most prosperous places in the world. According to your belief system, that is impossible. According to mine, it is inevitable. Why do the facts of objective physical reality prove me right and you wrong?
     
  13. Poohbear

    Poohbear Well-Known Member Past Donor

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  14. Poohbear

    Poohbear Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I am sure you have heard of the 'tragedy of the commons.'
    The world's fisheries are like that - everyone owns the seas, no-one owns the seas.
    Get what you can 'cos it won't be here tomorrow.
    Famine appears to be integral to Socialist/Communist countries, and one reason is
    the fact that the farmer has no self-interest in the land anymore, it isn't his and he is
    paid to work it - sort of paid.
    My landlady put her own asserts into her house - she paid her share for infrastructure.
    You come across as someone who doesn't own land, one who would think differently
    if you put your life's savings into a piece of land.
    To take land from people is invitation to violence.
     
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  15. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    I am sure you have NOT heard that Garrett Hardin, its author, later regretted the use made of his work by right wing privatizers, and said he should have called it, "The Tragedy of the Unmanaged Commons," because he was, unlike you, well aware of the fact that the tragedy had not happened to the actual historical commons because they were managed by the community. "The Tragedy of the Commons" was intended as a plea for responsible community management of commons, not their privatization.
    No one owns the seas.
    Because unlike land, the seas are not under the authority of any one government, and governments are all in competition to ensure their own nations get as much out of the sea as they can.
    No, that is false. Famine is common in undemocratic countries generally -- Ireland was certainly not socialist or communist when its landowners starved a million landless peasants to death in the 1840s, nor was India, whose landowners repeatedly starved millions to death every decade or two for centuries. The reason socialist countries have trouble feeding themselves is not that the farmer does not own the land -- after all, tenant farmers in non-socialist countries are just as productive as farmers who own the land -- but that he does not own his harvest.
    But she paid the wrong party -- the previous private landowner -- not the community that provided it. And the next owner will also pay the wrong party: her. Thus we have an arbitrarily long series of private landowners who all legitimately claim to have paid for infrastructure, and who all nevertheless pocket its publicly created value without lifting a productive finger. It's a subtle and ingenious scam that not one person in 100 is intelligent enough to see through. You would not be that one.
    You come across as someone who would rationalize and justify slavery on the grounds that slave owners also put their life savings into their property: "Go get a job, save up your money, and buy some slaves of your own. Problem solved!"

    The genius of institutionalized evil is that first it forces its victims to participate in it in self-defense; then it makes them dependent on it; and finally, it recruits them as its loudest defenders. That would be you.
    Like taking slaves from them. True. It is a peculiar fact of human nature that those who profit from injustice are far more attached to their wrongful gains than the productive are to their rightful earnings, and far more likely to resort to violence to retain them. Probably once they realize they are profiting from evil, they figure they have no rightfulness to lose by initiating violence to keep on profiting from it.
     
    Last edited: Nov 28, 2020
  16. Poohbear

    Poohbear Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Slavery is a false analogy here. My ownership of a car, horse, factory, house etc does not equate to me owning another
    human being. Nor is owning a parcel of land institutional evil - taking that land away from someone comes under that
    description.
    Tragedy of the Commons is real and documented. If everyone in your village "owns" your car then in a sense no-one owns
    it - and care for that car comes down to people's conscientious - some have it, most don't. Care for your own car is not a
    matter of conscientiousness, it's a matter of economics.
    What country, or age, would you prefer to live in if it's not a home owning, private property nation?
     
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  17. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    No, it is a perfectly valid and highly informative analogy here. The only difference between slavery and landowning is that slavery forcibly removes people's rights to liberty and makes them into other people's private property one person at a time, while landowning does it one right at a time.
    Right, because those are all products of labor that you are not depriving anyone else of their liberty to use: without their producer/initial owner, they would not exist. Land is not a product of labor, it already existed without the help of the owner or any previous owner, it would otherwise be available, and the landowner IS therefore forcibly depriving others of their liberty to do what they would otherwise have been at liberty to do.
    Yes, it is, because it forcibly abrogates others' rights with intent to inflict injustice. That is what it means to be evil.
    How much more so does taking it away from everyone, hmmmm?

    GET IT????
    When the commons are unmanaged.
    That is not real or documented, it is an absurd, self-contradictory and counterfactual attempt to change the subject from land to product of labor.
    OK, so you have realized that you cannot present any factual or logical arguments, so you have decided you need to change the subject from land, which no one created and does not need maintenance, to cars and other products of labor which their initial owners produced and which do need maintenance. No surprises there.
    See? You refuse to even consider the topic -- property in land -- and always have to disingenuously try to change the subject to products of labor. That should tell you something.
     
    Last edited: Nov 28, 2020
  18. Poohbear

    Poohbear Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Owning a horse IS oppressive - it's oppressive to the rights of the horse.
    Owning a car is repressive too - it was created with economically forced labor
    plus the land it is built upon and the land where resources are extracted.
    Marriage is oppressive - it curtails the rights of both parties, particularly women
    who undergo child birth (Of course, children are massively oppressive to both
    parties as they curtail freedoms of the parents.)
    Loyalty to one's country is oppressive - it provides no option for alternate
    loyalties.

    But I fail to see how owning a piece of land is oppressive. Tell me, where I live
    South Australia, in 'dry mallee farming' country - who exactly are the farmers
    here 'oppressing.' ? How would we farm this land if some John Lennon Marxist
    'imagine there were no possessions' style of land management was done here?

    I guess your ideal nation would be North Korea?
     
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  19. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    You're being comprehensively chewed up and spat out, Dude.
     
  20. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    BWAHAHAHAHAAAA!! See? You immediately have to resort to disingenuous absurdity. Horses do not have rights, and you know it. Only people have rights, because rights are an artifact of human society that only applies to its members.

    Strike One.
    Without reading further, I know that you will now resort to more fallacious, absurd and disingenuous nonsense. Watch:
    No it wasn't. You simply made that up. The only sense in which labor is economically forced is that landowners forcibly deprive the laborer of the natural opportunities that would otherwise be available to him, placing him in a disadvantageous bargaining position vis-a-vis employers.

    Strike Two.
    That repression is all inflicted by the owners of the land and resources, none of it by the owner of the car, who paid off the extortionists who own the land and resources via the purchase price of the vehicle.

    That's Strike Three, Casey. You're Out.

    Next batter...?
    Only in that family law restricts marital arrangements, denying some consenting adults their right to enter into voluntary contracts.

    Ball One.
    No, that's just more fallacious, absurd, and disingenuous tripe from you. Marriage in modern democratic societies is a voluntarily chosen contract. I agree, however, that compelling women to carry fetuses to term is grotesquely oppressive to them. Otherwise, children are an obligation freely undertaken -- conspicuously unlike the forcible transfer of people's liberty rights to landowners.

    Strike One.
    More fallacious, absurd and disingenuous garbage. Loyalty is a choice freely made. Having your rights to liberty forcibly stripped from you and given to landowners as their private property is not.

    Strike Two.
    It indisputably deprives everyone else of the liberty they would otherwise have to use it, compelling them to pay the owner for permission to access the advantages government, the community and nature provide.

    Strike Three, pal. Your second batter is also Out.

    Shall we see if you can even get on base this inning?
    Everyone who would otherwise be at liberty to use that land.

    Strike One.
    I have no idea, as I have not proposed any such arrangement.

    How do tenant farmers farm land? It's quite a common arrangement, and they seem to be as productive as owner-farmers. How would their efforts be impaired by paying the community for the advantages it and nature provide, instead of a private parasite? Indeed, the productive would benefit greatly by only having to pay for government once instead of twice.

    Strike Two.
    No, I already gave you the example of Hong Kong, where there has been no private landowning for over 160 years, and which has consistently ranked as one of the freest and most prosperous societies on earth, even despite the corrupting influence of Chinese socialism since 1997.

    That's Strike Three, sunshine, which retires the side.
     
    Last edited: Nov 29, 2020
  21. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    I have demolished and humiliated him for his fallacious, absurd, and disingenuous tripe. Inevitably.
     
  22. Poohbear

    Poohbear Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    There is a school of thought which holds that all animals DO have rights. These rights are
    easier to discern than the declared non-rights of home owners.
    I worked in the car industry for 20 years. Not many days I preferred to be at work than to go
    fishing, like Lenin and Marx said I had the right to. Every car driven by someone during that
    period of my life was, in a sense, made with my help. I should have the right to use all those
    cars.
    Quote - "(land ownership) indisputably deprives everyone else of the liberty they would otherwise
    have to use it, compelling them to pay the owner for permission to access the advantages government,
    the community and nature provide." We have 'mallee dry farming' here. Many of our local farmers hold
    land going back a 100 years or more. Some opened for 'returned servicemen' from WWI. Left as bush
    land this would be just fox and rabbit country, overgrown with exotic weeds. Not sure how these farmer
    are depriving someone of their liberties - the libertarians won't have farmers tramping through their own
    urban blocks. And the wheat, barley, canola and sheep from these farms feeds our libertarian friends.

    Quote re childbirth "grotesquely oppressive." We white Western people are willing ourselves to extinction.
    Long live more conservative, religious or tribal societies that will take our place.

    Quote (re your idea for land management) "I have no idea, as I have not proposed any such arrangement."
    You ought to think it through. Just as transgender, woke and PC people ought to think through where their
    ideas are taking us.
     
  23. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    But it is incoherent and indefensible, as any farmer should know.
    No they aren't. They plainly do not exist. Animals do not and cannot have rights because they are incapable of respecting rights.
    See? You immediately have to try to change the subject from land to products of labor.
    But you voluntarily chose to exchange your labor for your wages. It's true that your bargaining position was stripped from you along with your right to liberty, and given to landowners as their private property. But that in no way suggests that car owners are the ones violating your rights. Such a claim is self-evidently absurd and disingenuous. You have been and will continue to be making a lot of such claims, as long as you try to rationalize privilege and justify injustice.
    No, only the cars you worked on. Your claims continue to be flat, outright false as a matter of objective physical fact.
    If you hadn't agreed to accept your wages in return for your ownership interest in them.
    You might try troubling yourself to learn how to use the quote function.
    Now you just need to explain why using the land productively requires a farmer to own it, even though tenant farmers -- including every farmer in China, btw -- use it just as productively or even more productively without owning it.
    It is self-evident and indisputable that they forcibly (with government's help) deprive everyone else of their liberty to use it unless they pay full market value for permission to do so.
    Secure, exclusive land tenure is needed to enable an economy above the hunter-gatherer and nomadic herding levels. But private landowning is not.
    <sigh> Now all you need to do is answer The Question: How, exactly, is production of those things aided by the landowner's demand that the tenant farmer pay HIM for permission to access the economic opportunity government, the community and nature provide at that location?

    Don't bother trying to answer The Question. You can't. No one has ever been able to answer it, and no one ever will.
    You again have to try to change the subject. It is not voluntarily chosen childbirth that is grotesquely oppressive, it is compelling women to carry unwanted fetuses to term.
    The world's lowest birth rates are in East Asia. China legally prohibited women from having more than one child for decades, a policy no white Western country has ever come remotely close to. The reason birth rates are so low in Western capitalist countries is that we strip people of their rights to liberty without just compensation and make them into the private property of the privileged, especially landowners. This evil policy greatly increases the financial burden of child-rearing by making parents pay the privileged, especially landowners, full market value just for permission to support and educate their children, as well as to support themselves. THAT'S WHY LAND COSTS SO MUCH.
    It's true that modern finance capitalism is slowly exterminating its own working population by the mechanism of privilege -- especially landowner privilege -- described above. That is one way we know it is evil.
    Oh, I have, believe me. I have been doing this -- educating economic ignorami on the Internet -- for over 25 years, and have yet to encounter a single consistently defensible objection to the reforms I propose. You will not be offering one.
    Like socialists/communists/Marxists, the woke folk know in their hearts that there is something wrong in the world. They just, like the socialists/communists/Marxists, don't understand what it is.
     
    Last edited: Nov 30, 2020
  24. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    No you haven't.
     
  25. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Yes, actually, I have. And if you don't know that, it's because you aren't educated enough to understand it.
     

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