Quixen, I was only attempting to generalize and clarify the discussion, drawing together the elements alluded to by the various previous posts. I was not presuming to be you
| Without the very basic material necessities, how in the world can you "live", let alone be happy? |
Indeed! However, the arguments are apt to heat up as we attempt to define what constitutes "necessities". I am an American, so be it. I deduce that most (if not all) of our fellow posters are, at a minimum, from what is euphemistically called "the developed world" (versus "the developing world"). Our minimum standards of living would be considered obscene by Third World sensibilities (not that I think we should average down to the lowest common denominator). Think for a minute how on Earth "happiness" can exist in Calcutta or Burundi by these standards. Yet it does exist. If you are happy and content, is it forbidden to also be successful? By this I mean to define "success" by the combination of happiness and contentment each of us possesses. This makes "success" a relative term, useless in statistical analysis, I agree, but who likes statistics, anyway?
| My current thesis is that the slaves have not been liberated at all,only the shackles are now cleverly disguised. |
| When a man can work for fourteen hours a day without ever having a day off whether it's Sunday,Christmas or sickness and still not be able to provide even the bare essentials, something is wrong |
Agreed. But putting the class rhetoric aside for just a moment and speaking about real people and not some straw-man class stereotypes better left in a dusty college tome, there are laborers (all of us who provide some form of "work" for a living) and there are wages for this labor paid by somebody, who expects to get something for it. In this example, the laborer trolling for 14 hours a day is in what country? Under what set of Labor Laws was he/she/it employed?
Before we go attacking a fictional "free market system", we must understand that this too is a straw-man that doesn't exist. There are impediments to freewill in every system on Earth, whether by government (laws) or culture (mores). Mortal man can seldom foresee all of the consequences of his actions, so care should be exercised when force is applied to others to alter their freewill. Textbook "Capitalism" (von Mises, Smith, Hayek, et. al.) is merely a resource allocation methodology that seeks to achieve some "optimum" outcome. It is a tool, like a hammer. Without considering the human dimension (call it ethics/morality for lack of a better word), this tool can do great harm, just like a hammer in the hands of a murderer. When constrained by the proper intangible elements (the human dimension), this tool will allow the most bountiful harvests, far more so than any command economy can hope to achieve. At the heart of it is an innate trust in the balancing effects of myriads of different players' interests (good and bad) in "averaging" out each other. When excessive force is brought to bear by any one player (government for instance), it distorts the exchange: Freewill is abrogated. I would rather live in a "benevolent dictatorship" if such a creature actually existed
than a completely amoral, purely capitalistic true democracy. I do not value Hedonism highly, obviously!
How are we allowed to barter for our wages in exchange for our labor? Some structure (society) with rules (laws) will be necessary. But when writing these rules, what principles are followed?
As regards RIAA and their "defense" of copyright laws: Do you oppose copyrights in principle or just organizations of players which concentrates forces in ways you consider undesirable? Prior to the internet, there weren't avenues for large scale abuse that could really threaten the "value" of the copyrighted property that didn't involve such scale and organization that the costs were prohibitive to any but "corporate" entities (government included). China does not enforce copyrights for a simple reason: They currently do not produce anything of value to copyright. It is in their interests as a nation to allow such collective "thievery".
The internet is a very powerful tool. The barriers to entry are effectively zero and the distribution costs are effectively zero for an infinite audience (in the sense that anyone who gets wired to the net is a potential customer). Gone are the days of physical transport of goods (remember, we are talking about "copy" rights). This was an introduction of force/power on the side of the individual consumer that grossly unbalanced the system vis a vis the individual producer. Now there were no limits to "copy" and distribution, effectively making all value derived from scarcity meaningless in the internet age. Either a new model is needed or we shall get the quality of output worth every penny we paid... zero!
Go down to a poorly managed "arts" festival sometime to get an idea of what rubbish is produced when demand is removed from the equation. Technically, in this example, talented supply would be removed, but why quibble over a good analogy, eh?
Ahem...
Next?
Cheers!
