by sceneshifter » Mon Mar 13, 2006 2:35 am
StarmanSkye wrote: Speaking ONLY for myself -- after the third (minimum) or so posts of mine that I spent no little time and effort on discussing specific items re: several of your posts which you then gave little-to-no response to, I realized you were NOT interested in critical-thinking discussion.<br>I reply: I am shocked and bewildered to hear this. I thought I replied at length to all sincere genuine posts. I assure you I am very interested in critical-thinking discussion. I think my long reply posts show that clearly. <br><br>StarmanSkye: I don't doubt you're well-intentioned, but numerous folks here have given generously of their interest and insights -- the 'wall' is certainly not on their side. <br>I reply: I think that there is no wall on my side. I have listened and replied to comments. And waited for responses to my responses. <br>StarmanSkye: At one point you said there's no difference between Communism and Fascism, <br>I reply: Two things can be different in concept and the same in reality. Did you know that Mussolini's plan was borrowed from communism? I do think there is no practical difference between communism and fascism and all the other names given to theft, like plutocracy, aristocracy, monarchy, democracy, people's republic, etc. What counts is the degree of departure from equity, which is close to equal pay per hour for all jobs, or let us put it this way, that equal pay per hour for all jobs is infinitely closer to equity, and is simpler to monitor than variable pay which inevitably grows and grows. Communism took everything off everyone and gave it to the head of state: ie, it was the artificial most extreme injustice, which generated the greatest evils. <br>Starman: then another time you spoke of socialism and Communism as if they were the same thing, <br>I reply: there is soft socialism, that doesn't involve removal of private property, and is a modificaton of capitalism, and hard socialism which borders on communism. <br>Starman: another time you said the powerful and wealthy would embrace your plan once they realized they wouldn't have to give up their wealth and power. <br>I reply: I certainly didn't say that. Such a thing would be impossible to deduce from either the spirit or the letter of what I wrote. Your misreading can only make me reflect that it is sadly easy to be read a different way from one's meaning. Or suspect that there is some other reason why you could get such a contrary reading from what I have said. Maybe the CIA are changing what I write, to reduce it to nonsense. Or maybe you are deliberately putting the exact opposite of what I am writing to undermine my morale. <br>StarmanSkye: You make light of hidden history and the topics of deep politics and parapolitics that constitute the core of what this forum discusses, referring to them as trifling details and distractions -- is it any WONDER folks no longer comment?<br>I reply: Because a comment is unwelcome, unpalatable, bitter is no measure of its truth. What can I do when I think that discussion of such things is a waste of time, is ensuring nothing gets done effective against the disease? Others than I will agree that 1. it is very hard [and dangerous] to get hard data on nefarious doings of superpowerful 2. It would be very hard to remove the nefarious if you did get hard info. 3. Experience on this board of the complete failure to get data hard enough to be certain of anything in detail about bad doings should have made you despair of making a difference by this method. People on this board HAVE despaired of being successful that way. I offer an alternative. Can that be bad? Wrong? Is it not my duty and love to mention an alternative, to give new hope of succeeding in straightening the world out? <br><br>StarmanSkye: When it's helpfully suggested your ideas and understanding of how the real world works would benefit a LOT if you spent at least a year running your own business with employees, you apparently dismissed it as not even worth responding to. <br>I reply: I take it you are referring to robertdreed's suggestion on this. I did reply, and gave many sound reasons for my dissension from this view. If there is something I dont understand, why not just mention them? Why demand that I go away and run a business for a year before having the discussion? Because running a business is hard for some doesn't mean it is hard for all businessmen. My experience running a business would only be anecdotal evidence of any conclusion I might draw. I think that, on the whole, businessmen are not racked with worry, running around doing ten things at once, bursting with sweat at how hard their job is. If there is any such businessmen, it may they are not suited by nature's gifts to them to do that job with pleasure and job satisfaction. And where is the measurement of hardness of work? And how hard do others work in their jobs? An enormous advantage of equal hourly pay is that everyone is free to gravitate to the socially useful work that gives them most intrinsic satisfaction - Plato's definition of justice: everyone in the job they love most. And where is the ratio of hardness of work to pay? You I am sure do not think that the hardness of the work is the reason Bill Gates is paid so much. You will not claim that the ratio of his and your pay is equal to the ratio of the hardness of his and your work. <br>Pursuit of happiness requires pursuit of truth. And pursuit of truth means not allowing oneself the luxury of easy opinions, and the luxury of not investigating one's opinions. Train wheels get tapped regularly, because whether the wheel is sound or cracked, only good can come from testing the wheels. <br>StarmanSkye: Same with specific, practical questions about 'who decides?' how much people can get paid for their labour. <br>I reply: I am afraid that you missed my reply to rdr on this point. I said that if we only limit fortunes, overpay and underpay will be limited sufficiently. If unlimited wealth is prevented from sucking money limitlessly out of the economy, there will be money widely spread to approximate to justice and nonextinction and nonmisery. <br>StarmanSkye: I don't think you have even a MODEST grasp of how money works, or the difference between money and wealth. <br>I reply: you will have to give examples. <br>StarmanSkye: You don't even show you understand that most people don't work for an hourly wage. <br>I reply: when I say hourly rate of pay, I mean total net income after costs [secretary, offices, equipment, etc] and before tax, divided by number of hours worked. This applies to everyone. <br>StarmanSkye: Your inability to differentiate between wealth and money shows you haven't been very diligent in studying your subject. <br>I reply: I am speaking broadly to a general audience. Economics 101 distinctions and definitions are inappropriate and unnecessary. My points do not require the careful distinction of these terms. I use them in the common loose way, where it is not necessary to distinguish them. When I say wealth or money I refer to the broad general reality of overpay and underpay, of rich and superrich and poor and superpoor, of injustice and theft and the violence and extinction consequent. I begin to suspect you are reading me without goodwill to yourself. That is, you are not looking for nuggets of truth to aid your happiness, your awareness and realism, but looking for ways to push away opinions and realities. Our distaste for ideas is not a good gauge of their value and truth. Bitter truths are sweet in the aftertaste. <br>StarmanSkye: How do you expect people to take you seriously if people suspect you haven't put the time and effort into learning as much about the subject as you can?<br>I reply: I have put time and effort into learning, 10 years. Or in another sense, my whole life, acquiring knowledge and wisdom. I would have thought my learning and study would have been apparent. And my reasoning. Not one person has successfully shown any of my logic or arguments to be flawed in the 10 years I have been presenting it. That is not to say that my logic is not flawed, just that it may not be, since I have 10 years of failure to fault it. <br><br>StarmanSkye: I shudder to think what would happen if you were magically put in place as the US's Chief economist.<br>I reply: To shudder you have to assume that my ideas are bad. And you have not shown that, so you cannot assume that my being in charge would be bad. Your shuddering is premature. <br>StarmanSkye: Fact is, the kind of sweeping changes you propose <br>I reply: You have not read me with impartiality and fully functional selfinterest. You should read everything with an open mind to find nuggets to help you and your loved ones. I have indicated various ways in which this change can be gradual to avoid shocks between the present disastrous system and a good one. Please note that my scheme doesn't go ahead until virtually all agree it is good. If all agree it is good, then it goes ahead, not before. It cannot go ahead without virtual unanimity, because the general will has to be stronger than the PTB. The majority has to be great enough to prevent the tyrants from having enough force to impose their will. That is, enough in the police and army and government have to agree with this in order to prevent tyrants from state terrorism and state rule by fear. I dont need to say it is good: I just say, dont you think it is good [if you really think about it profoundly, impartially, sincerely, seriously, soberly, openmindedly, selfinterestedly.] If everyone agrees, then perhaps we are right. I have proof that everyone already agrees with it on some level of their selfcontradictory understandings. We dont have to convert, we just have to develop consistency with people's own opinions. <br>StarmenSkye: would cause horrific economic crises that NO ONE could accurately predict. <br>I reply: fallacious argument, selfcontradictory. You cannot both say it will have horrific consequences and that no one can predict the consequences. It is easy to say that any change will be bad, but where is your argument? All change in history has not been bad. And you forget that we have horrific financial crises now. What is a worse crisis than pay from $1 to $1,000,000,000 per 100 hours's work, with the average at $1000 [1999, doubling every 12 years or so] when all could have and should have US$75,000 per family working world average hard? If you are sincere, and devoted to your selfinterest, you will ask yourself why you are generating so many fallacious arguments, arguments that you can see, when they are pointed out, are false. You can see, when it is pointed out, that your argument: we must not have change, because previous changes have been wrong, is saying: we must not try to get out of the hole we are in because previous attempts have failed. There is nothing to stop us considering, for our own sakes, the potential of new ideas. I think that a big problem is that we assume we are happy. We dont easily take the point of view that we are badly off and need to find a solution. We dont sit down and list the ways we are not happy, and yet it is only by focussing and bringing up the ways we are unhappy that we can get any reason to strive for any improvement. I suspect you are thinking: I am not too unhappy, let's not have any change at all. But there is only good in testing the wheels of our train; if they are good, good, if they are bad, we save a nasty accident. Something is generating war, and it isnt human nature, because human nature is a constant factor and war has been growing for 1000s of years. Along with the inequity. <br>StarmanSkye: This has happened numerous times when someone who 'thought' they had a fantastic solution to the 'problem' of an economic system -- Bremer's sweeping imposition of new economic rules in Iraq are only the latest. The US-led west caused a horrible ongoing catastrophe in the former Yugoslavia in demolishing the 'threat of a good example' in its modern, progressive socialist economy. IMF/World Bank interference and structural adjustments have caused immense suffering and death ('course, that wasn't exactly unintended). Before that, Stalin's sweeping 'reforms' caused the famine-deaths of millions.<br>I reply: What about the change to capitalism? To money? To having a law against murder? To specialisation of labour? Not all change is bad. You cannot list bad changes to prove all change is bad. Although there are plenty who can be swayed by such false arguments. All solutions applied while tyrants are in power will meet their requirements. The one plan you will never see tried by superpowerful, superthieves, is one that reverses theft, regardless of the names given. <br><br>Starmanskye: Most people agree the current economic system is fraught with inequalities, injustices and corruption. The Federal Reserve system and the US policy of making the dollar the world's reserve currency has arguably resulted in, or largely contributed to, some of the world's worst conflicts and corruptions, betrayals and crimes -- with some of the world's most corrupt governments and genocidal monsters, organized criminal cartels and the booming war-industry deeply-committed to milking the Fed Ponzi Scheme for all they can as the Mother of all Tits. Unless and until you can speak intelligently about such deep issues and incorporate such considerations as current events, resource wars, powerful corporate and special interests, the black market and trillion-dollar-plus 'invisible' cash flows, global crime, the fiction of national soverignty in the context of the NWO of feudal corporatism, your 'plan' just isn't going to have much relevant traction or generate much interest.<br>I reply: You are complaining I havent written more, and you haven't read all I've written! I would have thought the connection between super extreme overunderpay and every one of the problems you list would have been clear. Perhaps I am wrong about this. But it is too clear that you [humanity] has approved and failed to disapprove of unlimited fortunes, the thing the american founding fathers tried to prevent in order to create a land of the free. And that consequently you have reared superrich, superpowerful, supercorrupt. To beat you to death with the weapons you paid for. You know power corrupts. You know money is power. You know people are pissed off to be paid less for the same contribution to society's pool of wealth. You know people don't like to be slaves, and will fight out of slavery how they can. You know unlimited fortunes puts power in the hands of people to enslave and extract wealth out of other people. You know powerful men use that power for one thing: to get more money and power. You talk about injustice but you dont like to hear it called theft. You talk about injustice but you dont attempt to quantify it so that you can aim for it. I have quantified it sufficiently to give a ballpark figure to head towards. People think unlimited fortunes is good. This is their mistake. It ought to be obvious as hell that unlimited overpay means unlimited underpay. It is obvious that an individual's contribution is limited not unlimited. It is clear that no one can work more than 250,000 hours a lifetime. It is clear that all the world work equals all the world money/wealth; no work, no wealth, no goods and services, money worthless if there are no goods. That if money stays the same and work doubles, the money will be worth twice as much because all the money equals all the work. That therefore the wealth/money created by an hour's work is equal to world annual income divided by world annual hours of work. US$50 trillion divided by 5 trillion hours, ie, US$10 [1999] US$15 [2006]. US$15 times 250,000 hours is US$3.75 million. Divide by 2 if you are going to discourage working more than 50 hours a week. $1.9 mn. Subtract a minimum lifetime's spending, say, US$1 million [$20,000 a year]. Leaves you with US$1 million in round numbers. Limitation of fortunes could be introduced gradually by lowing the limit towards $1 million from $100 billion. Or it could be just that overfortunes on decease are channelled towards the most underpaid, which will feed the whole economy as the money moves back up through the system from poor to rich again. Money will steadily trickle from deceased overfortunes to balance the countermovement of flow from underpaid to overpaid which generates the violence that has taken 99% of human birthright happiness and will soon take the last 1%, if we dont wake up soon. As for crime, unlimited fortunes is the greatest stimulus to crime. As well as the unlimited underpay, which drives to crime. Learn the lesson of sicilian poverty, which conquered america in 100 years. Poverty is too expensive. It breeds the worst, with the greatest drive to reach the top and to hell with justice. [Although justice is survival.]<br>All I should have to do is point out that pay is from $1 to $1 billion a fortnight, for everyone to instantly see what's what and what needs to be done. If the ocean was that rough, the ocean crests would be 10 times past the moon!!!!! How dull is the knife of human intellect!!!!! <br>StarmanSkye: IMHO, of course.<br>Have you researched what other alternative and progressive economic ideas are and what other people are thinking/doing?<br>I reply: Yes. Find one hole in my arguments before you recommend me to learn more.<br> <br>StarmanSkye: You might have a more interested audience on another forum given to idealist speculation.<br>I reply: You have not shown even slightly that this plan is impractical, idealistic or speculative. You have not shown that there is a better plan. You have not found one flaw in it. If you knew you [humanity] were in a deep shitty hole, you wouldnt be so offhand with this plan. Do we know our ignorance or are we ignorant of our ignorance? <br><br>StarmanSkye: Also: Have you read 'Ecotopia' by Ernst Callenbach?<br>Highly recommended for a brilliant 'what if' imagining of an alternative society based on the ideals of freedom, wise-development, local self-sufficiency, human and social justice, equality and parity, etc.<br>I reply: Thank you for the recommendation.<br>If people like war and terror and fighting and danger and thrills and fears and grabgrabgrabbing and thieving and plunder and rape, and dont like peace and decency and quietness, if people want to play this brutal game to the conclusion, if people want to play this game till the planet is a snowstorm, I am not going to say they shouldn't. They are welcome. They are free to do whatever they want to do. <p></p><i></i>