Marx wrote [regarding the charitable giving of Bill Gates]: “Mr. Gates isn’t doing any of THAT "giving", that’s his wife driving the charity, there was a Rolling Stone interview with the two of them a couple months ago and HE said he wouldn’t do it if his wife wasn’t the driving force.”
Marx,
Strange. Really strange. I thought people like you really appreciate humble people, people who credit others for their own achievements. Do you know the U.S. Congress actually declared some day [I don’t remember which day] a National Day of Humiliation! Christ! Right here in the United States...a national day of g-damn humiliation. The altruists love to see all of the little humans on their knees...all weak and desperate, helpless and needy. How the leftists hate the arrogant President Bush. Make up your mind! Do you want people to humbly give all the credit to their brother-men [or their wife] or do you want them to tell the truth and say “I’m a heck of a good guy?”
What you just read is actually my argument #2. My first argument would be: Bill Gates’ fortune is the moral result of his creative undertakings. He earned his fortune by his own effort. He deserves every penny of it, and as I have already said, we could never pay him enough for what he accomplished. Think of the trillions of dollars other people have made using his software. By rights, we should all be paying him a percentage! If Bill Gates did not give one dime of his money away he would be no less moral. Giving it all away wouldn’t make him more moral, either. Whether or not a person is living a moral life has nothing to do with how they spend their money...everything to do with how they acquire it. Gates’ wealth is the product of his genius. He can do with it whatever he wants.
Donn
[For some reason Marx decided to completely change the subject.]
Donn,
I understand that you say you’re not a Republican and I understand you keep saying you’re a laissez faire capitalist but you keep defending them and, at the same time, keep saying you’re not one of them. Reagan did a lot of damage. We survived even though we were well on our way to bankruptcy. Thank god Clinton managed to turn it around and, strangely, he did it by raising taxes on the top 1%. The Supply-Siders ALL screamed the economy would crash and burn and, surprise, it not only DIDN’T do that, it was one of the most profitable times in our history. Our economy reacts well to us paying off our bills. He streamlined the military and actually reduced the size of the Federal Government while reforming Welfare from a "way of life" to a "safety net." He did what all conservatives swear up and down they WANT to do but they couldn’t wait to tear him down. You SAY you’re a fiscal conservative but then why don’t you just adore Clinton?
We SOOOOOOOO overacted to 9-11. We let GW force the Patriot Act on us and that’s practically a fascist bill. It strips so many of our rights away. The man can listen to my phone calls, read my emails, sneak peaks into my home and search my stuff without a search warrant. What about Presidential Directive #51? Does it bother you that Bush gave the presidency the power to suspend elections and seize dictatorial powers? Do you realize that I actually held my breath when McCain said he was "suspending his campaign"? He started the department of Homeland Security, the biggest growth of our federal Government since FDR. The shocking thing is, I STILL hear Republicans calling Dems proponents of big government when they’ve grown it bigger than anyone I’ve seen in my lifetime. Its not about the size of government, it’s about the efficiency. Look how efficient FEMA worked under Clinton and what a disaster it was under GW. Reps complain at how inefficient government is and then work their best to make it so. I'd rather have Clinton and his mistresses then Bush screwing all of us.
Basically, I’ve said it before and I'll say it again. In order for our country to compete in today’s world, we need to take anything that works from any ideology. I COMPLETELY disagree with the Neocon concept of the "Unitary Executive." That’s for EITHER side. No one seems to realize what the terrorists REALLY want. THEY are winning. They wanted to financially BREAK this country, the way they BROKE the USSR in Afghanistan. Take a look around you, they’re winning. They were HOPING and praying we'd invade Afghanistan or Iraq and break our financial back and end our world financial domination. They NEVER thought they could invade and capture the US of A. They NEVER thought they could come here and do more than the occasional act of terrorism. They wanted us to react JUST the way we acted. INVADE, WAR, WAR, WAR!!!! They whole "Patriot Act" thing was never what they wanted, that was all Republican propaganda, telling people they were afraid of our freedoms and then, proceed to STRIP us of our freedoms .. it was SOOOO 1984, war is peace, peace is war, white is black, black is white. Mind you, they LOVED that we subjected Americans to this indignity but THAT was never in their plans. They got what they wanted, they got us involved in a war we couldn’t afford with a nebulous enemy we could never see. The truth is, or MY truth is, Clinton was ALWAYS 100% correct, terrorism is a Law Enforcement issue. Worldwide, the CORRECT answer was to work with Interpol and give them more power to find those murderous criminals because, they’re NOT just in Afghanistan or Iraq, they’re EVERYWHERE!!!
Marx
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Yellow Dog [Part 14]
Marcx Wrote: “People like you MAKE the case it’s not your problem but you avail yourself of these perks and YOU, personally, make your living off it. Your stance is EXTREMELY hypocritical.”
Marx,
Please keep this definition in mind as you read my response.
Altruism: “The basic principle of altruism is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue, and value.” [AR] The most basic absolute of altruism is self-sacrifice. The self is the standard of evil; the selfless is the standard of good. If you benefit, your action is evil: if others benefit your action is good.
This is the prevailing moral code in this world. I believe it is a most irrational and immoral code.
Now to your charge that I am a hypocrite because I teach in a public school and I am paid by taxpayers.
I exist in reality. The reality in which I exist was not created by me. If I could reconstruct the world’s institutions, I would. Obviously, I do not have the power to do this. I wish to teach. I wish to excel in everything that I do. I wish to earn as much as possible doing what I love to do. I earn every penny of my paycheck, and then some. To deny myself opportunities that exist in this world because on principle I would have done things another way, would be altruistic. I would be sacrificing my own well-being and the well-being of my wife and my kids [my highest values] for a lesser value, my belief in laissez-faire capitalism.
For example, I believe Social Security should be abolished, that the private sector can accomplish retirement insurance much more efficiently and profitably than the existing system. I have been forced to pay into this program my entire adult life. If, on principle, I refused to cash my social security checks upon retirement, that would be altruistic. I would be punishing myself, sacrificing my own well-being to make a point about a system I did not design, that I was forced to pay into.
A corollary thought:
Integrity, uncompromising respect for the truth, is one of my highest values. It sits on what I call “my top shelf” along with me, my kids, my current wife, and my career, and my liberty. I have plenty of faults and do lots of things I’m not particularly proud of, but I’m not a liar, Marx. I can be this way because I live in country where I am free to speak my mind and pursue my goals without fear. If I lived in Saddam’s Iraq or Castro’s Cuba I would become a professional liar over night. Despotic regimes destroy all values. Despotic regimes all have one thing in common: collectivism-altruism.
Donn
Marx wrote: “You make the late 1800's early 1900's sound like a utopian paradise which it was, if YOU happened to be in the upper 1%. For the rest it was endless labor, no retirement, no healthcare from 5,6, 7 and up. There was NO child labor laws and children worked for 12 hours a day. How many women were locked in sweatshops for 16 hours a day? How many died from fires because they locked the doors to keep them in and they were supposed to pee in a bucket in the corner? Education? Only for the wealthy that could pay for it. Low oil costs? Of course, he drove all the competitors out of business and paid his employees pennies a day with no retirement, health care or even guarantee of a job tomorrow.”
Marx,
The agrarian economies of the pre-industrial world provided the vast majority of humans the most despicable living conditions imaginable...sewage-polluted drinking water, and no medicine to treat the resulting cholera, typhoid, and dysentery...flea infested rats spreading Black Death across Europe killing a third of the population... widespread alcoholism and early death in the U.K. because the only safe thing to drink was cheap gin...chattel slavery in the South right here in the United States. [It’s a good thing people didn’t live long.] These are all realities that were reversed over time after the Industrial Revolution and the birth of capitalism.
Certainly, you are correct when you argue the dismal conditions of the late 19th and early 20th Century sweatshops. By today’s standards they were abysmal. But, while you throw the baby out with the bath water, you forget to mention several important truths: Like rural peasants today across the globe, these people moved to cities so that they could get these coveted jobs. These people and their shoeless, hungry children had always worked 16 hour days, laboring endlessly, without health care, without retirement, without pay. If their meager crops failed, they starved to death. These people moved to the cities and showed up to work each day, and brought their children with them because they had never had it so good! It’s a sad truth, but the truth nonetheless. NOBODY was forced to work in a sweatshop. They chose this work because it was far better than any alternative in existence.
At least the workers in the U.S. northern states got paid for their work in the factories.
Great Britain and the U.S. northern states were the first two places in history and across the globe to abolish slavery. The Industrial Revolution had taken hold in Britain and the North. Free enterprise and capitalism were evolving. In the southern states where the old world, pre-industrial, agrarian economy persisted, slavery flourished for another half century and had to be put down, finally, by a bloody war. Capitalism ended slavery on this planet, my friend.
Marx, I consider you a pretty knowledgeable guy with whom I disagree. Nothing wrong about that. That can be a good thing. We can make each other think. But, I must say, you really don’t know anything about J.D Rockefeller. You should stop trashing him. All you know is the popular, yellow press, socialist picture of him painted by a gifted writer named Ida Tarbell. Ms. Tarbell was the early 20th Century’s Michael Moore, only worse: she had a personal vendetta against Rockefeller on whom she laid the blame for her brother’s financial destruction. Probably the most balanced history of Rockefeller is a book called Titan by Ron Chernow. He trashes Rockefeller when he can; he defends him when he has to. It’s a first rate biography. There are other books as well.
Rockefeller, for example, did not turn to God as he grew old and start giving his money away for fear of hell. From my point of view the truth is not much better, but here goes...Rockefeller was a Northern Baptist, a regular church-goer his entire life, who believed that God had given him his talent for making money because he was one of the few people on Earth who knew how to spend it well! Nuts, I know. In adjusted dollars, this, the richest American in history, owned only three homes, lived on milk and cheese and crackers, and wore the same overcoat every day until people began to comment on how tattered it was beginning to look. He consumed during the course of his 93 year life less than 1% of his accumulated wealth. He built the University of Chicago and saved Atlanta’s Spelman College, a school for black women. He financed the first, life-saving medical science of the first half of the 20th Century, that thing you call “health care.”
Donn
Marx,
Please keep this definition in mind as you read my response.
Altruism: “The basic principle of altruism is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue, and value.” [AR] The most basic absolute of altruism is self-sacrifice. The self is the standard of evil; the selfless is the standard of good. If you benefit, your action is evil: if others benefit your action is good.
This is the prevailing moral code in this world. I believe it is a most irrational and immoral code.
Now to your charge that I am a hypocrite because I teach in a public school and I am paid by taxpayers.
I exist in reality. The reality in which I exist was not created by me. If I could reconstruct the world’s institutions, I would. Obviously, I do not have the power to do this. I wish to teach. I wish to excel in everything that I do. I wish to earn as much as possible doing what I love to do. I earn every penny of my paycheck, and then some. To deny myself opportunities that exist in this world because on principle I would have done things another way, would be altruistic. I would be sacrificing my own well-being and the well-being of my wife and my kids [my highest values] for a lesser value, my belief in laissez-faire capitalism.
For example, I believe Social Security should be abolished, that the private sector can accomplish retirement insurance much more efficiently and profitably than the existing system. I have been forced to pay into this program my entire adult life. If, on principle, I refused to cash my social security checks upon retirement, that would be altruistic. I would be punishing myself, sacrificing my own well-being to make a point about a system I did not design, that I was forced to pay into.
A corollary thought:
Integrity, uncompromising respect for the truth, is one of my highest values. It sits on what I call “my top shelf” along with me, my kids, my current wife, and my career, and my liberty. I have plenty of faults and do lots of things I’m not particularly proud of, but I’m not a liar, Marx. I can be this way because I live in country where I am free to speak my mind and pursue my goals without fear. If I lived in Saddam’s Iraq or Castro’s Cuba I would become a professional liar over night. Despotic regimes destroy all values. Despotic regimes all have one thing in common: collectivism-altruism.
Donn
Marx wrote: “You make the late 1800's early 1900's sound like a utopian paradise which it was, if YOU happened to be in the upper 1%. For the rest it was endless labor, no retirement, no healthcare from 5,6, 7 and up. There was NO child labor laws and children worked for 12 hours a day. How many women were locked in sweatshops for 16 hours a day? How many died from fires because they locked the doors to keep them in and they were supposed to pee in a bucket in the corner? Education? Only for the wealthy that could pay for it. Low oil costs? Of course, he drove all the competitors out of business and paid his employees pennies a day with no retirement, health care or even guarantee of a job tomorrow.”
Marx,
The agrarian economies of the pre-industrial world provided the vast majority of humans the most despicable living conditions imaginable...sewage-polluted drinking water, and no medicine to treat the resulting cholera, typhoid, and dysentery...flea infested rats spreading Black Death across Europe killing a third of the population... widespread alcoholism and early death in the U.K. because the only safe thing to drink was cheap gin...chattel slavery in the South right here in the United States. [It’s a good thing people didn’t live long.] These are all realities that were reversed over time after the Industrial Revolution and the birth of capitalism.
Certainly, you are correct when you argue the dismal conditions of the late 19th and early 20th Century sweatshops. By today’s standards they were abysmal. But, while you throw the baby out with the bath water, you forget to mention several important truths: Like rural peasants today across the globe, these people moved to cities so that they could get these coveted jobs. These people and their shoeless, hungry children had always worked 16 hour days, laboring endlessly, without health care, without retirement, without pay. If their meager crops failed, they starved to death. These people moved to the cities and showed up to work each day, and brought their children with them because they had never had it so good! It’s a sad truth, but the truth nonetheless. NOBODY was forced to work in a sweatshop. They chose this work because it was far better than any alternative in existence.
At least the workers in the U.S. northern states got paid for their work in the factories.
Great Britain and the U.S. northern states were the first two places in history and across the globe to abolish slavery. The Industrial Revolution had taken hold in Britain and the North. Free enterprise and capitalism were evolving. In the southern states where the old world, pre-industrial, agrarian economy persisted, slavery flourished for another half century and had to be put down, finally, by a bloody war. Capitalism ended slavery on this planet, my friend.
Marx, I consider you a pretty knowledgeable guy with whom I disagree. Nothing wrong about that. That can be a good thing. We can make each other think. But, I must say, you really don’t know anything about J.D Rockefeller. You should stop trashing him. All you know is the popular, yellow press, socialist picture of him painted by a gifted writer named Ida Tarbell. Ms. Tarbell was the early 20th Century’s Michael Moore, only worse: she had a personal vendetta against Rockefeller on whom she laid the blame for her brother’s financial destruction. Probably the most balanced history of Rockefeller is a book called Titan by Ron Chernow. He trashes Rockefeller when he can; he defends him when he has to. It’s a first rate biography. There are other books as well.
Rockefeller, for example, did not turn to God as he grew old and start giving his money away for fear of hell. From my point of view the truth is not much better, but here goes...Rockefeller was a Northern Baptist, a regular church-goer his entire life, who believed that God had given him his talent for making money because he was one of the few people on Earth who knew how to spend it well! Nuts, I know. In adjusted dollars, this, the richest American in history, owned only three homes, lived on milk and cheese and crackers, and wore the same overcoat every day until people began to comment on how tattered it was beginning to look. He consumed during the course of his 93 year life less than 1% of his accumulated wealth. He built the University of Chicago and saved Atlanta’s Spelman College, a school for black women. He financed the first, life-saving medical science of the first half of the 20th Century, that thing you call “health care.”
Donn
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Yellow Dog [Part 13]
Marx Wrote: “I wonder if you'd feel that way when the roads were no longer repaired or had to pay toll at all the private roads or if the parks were no longer maintained or charged entrance fees or if the police were for hire only and if you’re poor, no crimes would be solved or if the fire department decided to haggle with you outside your burning house, don’t have the money? Let it burn. I wonder if you'd feel that way if you were having a stroke and your wife had to strike a deal with the paramedics before they'd render any care. Would you feel that way when the poorest children couldn’t get an education and ended up either trapped in a life of poverty, crime or ill health because they couldn’t afford an education or health care either.”
Marx,
Infrastructure, parks, and paramedics...
Let me begin with a few of your own words...Marx! Don’t believe ANYTHING you have ever read about capitalism or capitalists! It’s all lies!!!
Here is a simple rule I’d like you to keep in mind: If there is even one dollar of government money in play, what you are witnessing is NOT capitalism.
Have you ever read the story of the great railroad man, James J. Hill? Back in Lincoln’s time when political entrepreneurs [the people you call “Robber Barons”] stormed Washington D.C. to get their cut of the tax-payer money the government was giving out to anybody who said they could build a railroad, James J. Hill refused government money, gathered a few partners together, took out a loan from a private bank, bought the failed Minnesota line of the government-subsidized Northern Pacific railroad [after battling the government for five years in court], and built the Great Northern Railroad. Because Hill was risking his own money on the project, he built his railroad most efficiently with his customer in mind. He knew he would only survive if he built a railroad that served the people who paid his bills, the farmers [for example] who needed the railroad to move their products to market. Hill’s Great Northern was the “best constructed and most profitable of all the world’s major railroads.” [DiLorenzo] It is the ONLY transcontinental railroad that never went bankrupt.
James J. Hill and J.D. Rockefeller were not Robber Barons, Marx. Robber Barons are the “political entrepreneurs,” people who seek government contracts and federal dollars so that they can....er...make a ton of money. Capitalists, like Hill and Rockefeller, don’t take a dime from politicians or taxpayers. They risk their own money. They have the incentive to be efficient, to serve the consumers who pay their bills, to pay their most productive workers well, because it is their livelihood on the line. Hill’s and Rockefeller’s employees were the best paid in their respective industries. Neither EVER had a workers’ strike while they chaired their own company. Consumers only benefited from their activities as prices in both markets dropped. Political entrepreneurs risk nothing. They take taxpayer money: they have no incentive to be efficient. They’re not railroad men or oil men...they are men who want to make a bunch of money. They, and their political friends in Washington, make a corrupt bundle providing substandard services. When they fail, there are no consequences. Every government-built railroad in the United States failed within 40 years of its construction. Government subsidized airlines today are equally disastrous. Political entrepreneurs are just about all we have left today [except most small businesses]. These people are propped up by both Dems and Reps in Washington, and taxpayers are made to cover their inevitable losses, BUT THEY ARE NOT CAPITALISTS!
If 874 and 836 in Miami had been built by Hill or Rockefeller or any true capitalist, your toll would probably be a quarter and the roads would be better kept. Last time I drove to work and back in Miami, I paid $4.00...average speed? About 20 mph.
Parks. Hey, I heard about this amazing private park. It’s so much fun and so well kept. People from all over the world come to visit it. Every year the capitalists who run the place open the doors to thousands of poor and sick kids who otherwise would never be able to afford to go. There’s very little crime there. In fact, I don’t think there has ever been a murder. It’s called Disney World.
Paramedics. Last time I checked both public and private hospitals offer ambulance services, but that’s beside the point. The point is: laissez-faire capitalists do not argue that there is no proper function for government. As I have said previously, there are legitimate functions for government and taxpayers must pay for these services. Government has a responsibility to protect our individual rights, including our lives, our liberty, and our property. The Defense Department, the Justice Department, police and fire fighters are all legitimate government services.
If we raised our children with the understanding that they have no right to anything they haven’t earned, we’d have far less crime. Of this I am certain.
Donn
Marx,
Infrastructure, parks, and paramedics...
Let me begin with a few of your own words...Marx! Don’t believe ANYTHING you have ever read about capitalism or capitalists! It’s all lies!!!
Here is a simple rule I’d like you to keep in mind: If there is even one dollar of government money in play, what you are witnessing is NOT capitalism.
Have you ever read the story of the great railroad man, James J. Hill? Back in Lincoln’s time when political entrepreneurs [the people you call “Robber Barons”] stormed Washington D.C. to get their cut of the tax-payer money the government was giving out to anybody who said they could build a railroad, James J. Hill refused government money, gathered a few partners together, took out a loan from a private bank, bought the failed Minnesota line of the government-subsidized Northern Pacific railroad [after battling the government for five years in court], and built the Great Northern Railroad. Because Hill was risking his own money on the project, he built his railroad most efficiently with his customer in mind. He knew he would only survive if he built a railroad that served the people who paid his bills, the farmers [for example] who needed the railroad to move their products to market. Hill’s Great Northern was the “best constructed and most profitable of all the world’s major railroads.” [DiLorenzo] It is the ONLY transcontinental railroad that never went bankrupt.
James J. Hill and J.D. Rockefeller were not Robber Barons, Marx. Robber Barons are the “political entrepreneurs,” people who seek government contracts and federal dollars so that they can....er...make a ton of money. Capitalists, like Hill and Rockefeller, don’t take a dime from politicians or taxpayers. They risk their own money. They have the incentive to be efficient, to serve the consumers who pay their bills, to pay their most productive workers well, because it is their livelihood on the line. Hill’s and Rockefeller’s employees were the best paid in their respective industries. Neither EVER had a workers’ strike while they chaired their own company. Consumers only benefited from their activities as prices in both markets dropped. Political entrepreneurs risk nothing. They take taxpayer money: they have no incentive to be efficient. They’re not railroad men or oil men...they are men who want to make a bunch of money. They, and their political friends in Washington, make a corrupt bundle providing substandard services. When they fail, there are no consequences. Every government-built railroad in the United States failed within 40 years of its construction. Government subsidized airlines today are equally disastrous. Political entrepreneurs are just about all we have left today [except most small businesses]. These people are propped up by both Dems and Reps in Washington, and taxpayers are made to cover their inevitable losses, BUT THEY ARE NOT CAPITALISTS!
If 874 and 836 in Miami had been built by Hill or Rockefeller or any true capitalist, your toll would probably be a quarter and the roads would be better kept. Last time I drove to work and back in Miami, I paid $4.00...average speed? About 20 mph.
Parks. Hey, I heard about this amazing private park. It’s so much fun and so well kept. People from all over the world come to visit it. Every year the capitalists who run the place open the doors to thousands of poor and sick kids who otherwise would never be able to afford to go. There’s very little crime there. In fact, I don’t think there has ever been a murder. It’s called Disney World.
Paramedics. Last time I checked both public and private hospitals offer ambulance services, but that’s beside the point. The point is: laissez-faire capitalists do not argue that there is no proper function for government. As I have said previously, there are legitimate functions for government and taxpayers must pay for these services. Government has a responsibility to protect our individual rights, including our lives, our liberty, and our property. The Defense Department, the Justice Department, police and fire fighters are all legitimate government services.
If we raised our children with the understanding that they have no right to anything they haven’t earned, we’d have far less crime. Of this I am certain.
Donn
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