utopian daydreams for an armageddon afternoon

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on income confiscation

Postby robertdreed » Mon Feb 06, 2006 2:03 am

sceneshifter, I am "for a reduction of the bulk of the inequalities of fortune ."<br><br>That's accounts for my first $50,000 free- 50-50 flat tax idea. <br><br>But- as youv'e supplied him as an example already- is Bill Gates supposed to have built and run Microsoft on $75,000 a year? Where's his investment capital supposed to come from?<br><br>Bill Gates was one of the very few individuals who wre the progentors of the modern computer industry- founders of an entirely new sector of the economy, simply as the result of their ideas and inventions. Yeah, I know, some people think he's the Antichrist of the computer business. ( Although thus far, the antitrust courts don't seem to have agreed. ) And every charitable thing he does, they see as informed by venal self-interest...well, he can't very well give away his competitors' computers to the public schools of the nation. And no matter how much money he gives away in his choice of charitable endeavors, there are those who won't be happy until his fortune is limited to $75,000 a year. <br><br>Well- how many people have <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>you</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> ever employed in a business? How much tax revenue do <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>you</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> supply to the government? <br><br>I'm reading paragraph after paragraph of appeal to morality, along with a lot of presumptions and assumptions about wages, income, and wealth. But I haven't seen a single statistical reference or link. And to say that you've been unclear on exactly how this limitation would be accomplished, or how to set the wage scales of those who earn less than the $75,000 annual maximum you posit, is to understate the case. In fact, the practical mechanisms of your "redistribution" program are completely missing from your broadside. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: on theft confiscation

Postby sceneshifter » Mon Feb 06, 2006 7:22 am

<br><!--EZCODE FONT START--><span style="color:black;font-family:comic sans ms;font-size:x-small;">Oh boy oh boy, lots to answer<br><br>Let me say first that this is not a battle between you and me - It is a battle between the accepted ideas and reality - it is a battle between the accepted ideas, polluted by the thinking of the rich and powerful, who have influenced economics very much, and more impartial thinkers - The voices in economics who are talking about decreasing the wealth disparity have always been in a minority - The economists in prestigious positions in the establishment who have been able to talk of decreasing wealth disparity have always been in a minority - And no doubt, generally, in less secure positions than the pro-establishment voices - Galbraith, Thurow, Tawney, etc - The major voices of reducing wealth disparity have come from outside the professional economists, from journalists or literature - Henry George, Frederick Bastiat, Bernard Shaw, Tolstoy, and so on - The extreme disparity means an extreme war in which truth suffers extremely - Even people on the side of wealth parity have been polluted by ideas from the establishment that have become accepted ideas - eg Adams, 'father of economics' [cant for the moment think of his first name - it'll come], David Hume and J S Mill<br><br>Your 50,000 taxfree and 50-50 thereafter is based on what? - It lacks precision - It does not go into the question, how much is self-earned, how much other-earned? - To reduce the violence to a survivable level and to a pleasant level, there has to be minimum taking of selfearned money, maximal taking of other-earned money - Because that is just, and justice means minimal violence and societal disturbance - Which is what we have to have to avoid extinction - You have worked from the point that we need money for investment, so fortunes have to be unlimited, but on the other hand wealth disparity has to be decreased, so take some money off the over 50,000s to finance this<br><br>I think you will agree that no one can work more than twice as hard as the average of 50 hours a week - But I have gone through all the reasons given for higher-lower hourly pay rate and found nothing that stands up to sense - Not business risk, not 'responsibility and headaches', not brains, merit, natural gifts, not experience, not skill - If we pay students - I have dealt with responsibility and headaches elsewhere on this discussion board, and for risk I have said something and referred people to section 51 of Global Happiness, free at globalhappiness.org [not an org] - And if people still have questions about risk, we can discuss it - I have dealt with natural gifts - I am very very very happy to discuss any disagreements - In general, I claim that the range of work per hour is limited - I think that no one contributes more than 10% more to the social pool of wealth by their work per hour than the average - If a person is working, they are working - Slacking more than 10% gets noticed and fired - So the average is not pulled down much by invisible slacking - How much harder per hour can an individual work than the average - People paid twice as much per hour are not racing around at twice the speed - People paid a billion times as much per hour are not racing around at a billion times the speed, getting a billion times as much work done<br><br>If people were not blinded by custom and no-thought, everone would see sense, that there is egregious superduper hyperdyper overpay and underpay<br><br>Looking at it another way, the maximum that one person can do is equal to the amount of wealth production they can do in a state of nature alone, times the efficiency factor of specialisation of labour - <br><br>Investment capital - where is it coming from - An accepted idea is that you need rich to provide investment money - I have it from Galbraith, 'the dean of economists' that capital formation [savings, investment] is highest in eqalitarian countries, like Norway, lowest in extreme rich-poor countries, like the Middle East - Oil rich shieks do not provide investment money - Of course, where capital formation is highest, money is cheapest to borrow - [I guess that the reason for this is that in eqalitarian societies, there is an experience of a LEVEL of comfort - the society has a recognisable plateau of comfort - When people reach this level, they have a feeling of having done enough, and save the rest - Where awful poverty yawns, and the rich are fighting one another hard, no amount of money is enough for anybody - There is no 'i have arrived' experience - that's just my guess]<br><br>Of course, even if investment were higher with overpay-underpay, it would not justify the theft to say that investment is needed - You cant say: we need investment, so the majority must give 90% of money to a minority, so the minority can invest - <br><br>There is another good reason to have justice - The amount of money is the same of course, the only difference is that it is in the hands of the owners-earners, the people who really make money, by work - In that case the things invested in will be what the majority want to invest in, not what the minority want to invest in - It is very nice for philanthropists to finance museums and atr galleries and so on, but 1, it isnt their money to spend or give away, 2 they may spend it on things different from what the people who own-earn-make the money would spend it on - ie, it is undemocratic, tyrannical, patronising<br><br>Progenitor, founder - Yes, but how much work did he do? - ['modern computer industry', 'entirely new sector of the economy' are not reasons to pay him] - See my write-up of the 'Peak of the pyramid is the pyramid' fallacy - on this board - or see section 26 in Global Happiness - No doubt these remarks could be expanded<br><br>I suddenly feel despair - There are so many false ideas, and so little cortex to influence or move the bulk of the brain away from herd-faith and accepted ideas to sense - Even if I argue this perfectly and totally, the bulk of the brain will just get up tomorrow and say, Oh, well, I'm sure that is very well, but ...[the herd cannot be wrong, accepted ideas are never wrong] - The reptile-mammal bulk of the brain will just wipe all trace of these rational ideas from the cortex - To say nothing of the downright vicious enmity of a few against anyone who has questioned the accepted ideas - <br><br>And I have answered only 4 of your 14 points so far!<br><br>An intelligent species, one would only have to say: hourly payrate ranges from $10,000,000 to 1c; and they would understand everything - They would understand that that was causing the violence, and decimating - 'centimating' - 'millimating' - quality of life of everyone - [Even with my proof that everyone already knows that this inequity range is causing the violence, no one gets it: Proof: If the US govt rearranged incomes to range from $10,000,000 to 1c an hour, everyone would know that this would cause gigantic upheaval of society, gigantic increase in violence and oppression, and endless offshoot problems - Therefore this is how much violence will disappear if wealth disparity is removed] - They would leap on my simple, unbureaucratic methods of 'de-stealing' the world money - They would leap on my explanation of how money automatically, ceaselessly shifts from earners to nonearners - In fact, with an intelligent species, with cortex sense dominant, we would never have got into this super hyper mega degree of mess - Everyone trying to grab as much as they can of the cake, and destroying the cake, when there is enough cake to more than satisfy everyone <br><br>Do you want proof that pay ranges from $10,000,000 to 1c? - Bill Gates, increased fortune by 18 billion in 1997 or 1998 - which is 2/3 billion per fortnight - peaking, with ups and downs of business, at 1 billion a fortnight, or 100 hours - or 10 million an hour - Average annual per capita income, Bangladesh, $100 - therefore average family income is $500 - or $250 per adult per year - which equals 10c an hour - But this is the average, and there is great 'wealth disparity' - theft - in B - [Landlessness has gone from 15% to 75% since partition in 1948 - a B woman spent $20,000 on her wedding dress] - Hence lowest hourly rate is of the order of 1c, or much less - Ie, $1 billion to $1 a fortnight - An inequity factor of one billion - Same amount of work, a billion times / a billionth of the pay - <br><br>Pay of 1 billion is under $1 a day, ie, under $365 a year - pay of 3 billion is under $2 a day, ie, $730 a year, ie, 1/100th of average see Bread of the world website or any UN statement - World average family pay: $75,000 a year - The consciousness of these facts are not really in our media, are they - We say 'social injustice', 'wealth disparity' but we dont see much <br><br>5. Charity - this point covered above - a person cant be charitable with others' money - 'steal the pig and give the feet to charity' - philanthropist: a bandit who is kind to beggars [that the bandit beggared] - Punishment for those who steal the goose off the common, but no punishment for those who steal the common off the goose - The enclosure of vast areas of rural land, destroying the rural culture, making labour cheap in the towns - Read Oliver Goldsmith's 'The deserted village' - Which is on the web - <br><br>6. Another example of an accepted idea [probably promoted, unconsciously or consciously, by the overpaid] that doesnt stand up to examination - Bill Gates doesn't create employment - The employment is created by the demand for the product - By the money customers pay - And a lot more customers would have been buying if the price hadnt been hiked 4 to 10 times cost by scarcity value - [In going from $5 million to $50 billion in 30 years, Bill Gates's annual average profit rate has been around 36% - which means 36/136ths or about 25% of the price has gone into Gates's pocket IN RETURN FOR NOTHING AT ALL - Because his labour, his salary, is paid out of costs - His labour is a cost of the computer, and he earns it all [unless his salary is excessive] - But the accepted ideas will make this idea invisible - The idea that there is legal theft in our economic system - despite $10 million an hour - is ungraspable - Even though it is obviously of great interest to everyone that they are unwillingly unwittingly giving heaps to Gates and many others - We are under a spell - A very tough spell - We are under this spell that if everyone is allowed to grab as much as they can out of the pool of wealth created by everyone's work, that we will be happy - The pool of wealth looks so good, is so big - And all for me - This spell has not been broken by the escalation of war and weaponry from sticks and stones even unto the eve of extinction - I'm crazy to think I can do anything - But, on the other hand, reality has been drilling into the human head for so long, it may break through any moment - If you stop drilling, you may stop 5 feet from the oil<br><br>Sooner or later [baring extinction] we will get this idea - It might be soon, it might be tomorrow - It might be a million years away - It is so simple that Im ashamed to be suggesting it - But it is certain we havent got it yet - Strange and wondrous as that is - <br><br>How do I arrive at the figure that an hour's work produces US$15 worth of goods or services? - Total world annual work has to equal total world annual income - World income 1987: $25 trillion, doubling every 12 years at 6% global inflation - So, $50 trillion in 1999 - $75 trillion in 2006 - [See Sprout and Weaver, International distribution of income 1960-1987, Kyklos, v45, 1994, p238-254] - Average size of families: about 6, ie, 1 billion families - equals $75,000 per family - Two adults, working 2500 hours a year each - equals US$15 an hour, paying housewives/mothers as well - When a person works, the major thing they sacrifice is the time - It is time they can't do other work - [The range of energy-sacrifice in jobs is slight, and cost of replacing energy is so small it can be discounted] - <br><br>7. Tax! Everyone knows that corporations often pay little tax - And anyway, the tax take is determined by the size of the industry, which is based on consumer demand - Gates is not a taxgiving superman - Though for some reason, people idolise him, idealise him - He is a hero, a great patriot, or something - This phenomenon, of idealising the wealthy, is part of the adoration of the social pool of wealth - Oh, look, he was able to take out heaps and heaps from the social pool of wealth! - What a great guy! - On the other hand is the hatred of the fatcats - The men in the cartoons, wealthy off war - The failure of the league of nations to stop the armaments manufacturers from fomenting wars - 'Arms dealer: a man who sells you guns to protect yourself from someone to whom he has sold cannon' Ambrose Bierce - We have these wise cynics telling us truth and we just dont hear<br><br>8. Whoa! - NO appeal to morality, if you mean, appeal to: be nice to the poor, its nice to be nice, and god will love you - this plan works if everyone is 100% selfish - If everyone devotes themselves entirely to their own interest - If everyone doesnt care a toot about the starving, etc - 'We care more about a cut finger on our hand than about the death of 250,000 in an earthquake' - or a million boat people, or famine victims - Let's face it, we are just not compassionate - An appeal to compassion hasnt worked - There isnt that much compassion, and sitting in church on sundays for 2000 years hasnt changed that - No, this is based on self-interest - You can be as compassionate as you like, but it isnt part of this plan - This is a practical plan - A sane plan - Being compassionate isnt sane - There is no REASON given, to be compassionate - The church says: You should be nice - But it cannot say why - And it isnt nice itself - In fact it is much worse than ordinary people - No reason being given, means that if you are compassionate, you are practising insanity, non-sense, because you are doing something without a good real reason - Which is one of the reasons that people are not practising sanity and sense - Too much practice practising non-sense <br><br>9. 'A lot of assumptions about wages, incomes and wealth' - These are? - Or have I now answered how I arrive at all my 'assumptions'?<br><br>10. 'A single statistical reference or link' - Gee, Im trying to be brief! - Any you want that I havent given here, let me know<br><br>11. 'How this limitation is to be accomplished' - You presumably havent read all my posts - <br><br>a. Other-earned part of fortunes on decease to be put direct into bank accounts of the most severely enslaved/underpaid - Governments to arrange programs to give everyone a bank account, teach everyone the meaning and use of, etc - Thus at one stroke decreasing overpay and overpower at one end, and reducing [righteous] violence at the other end - Why are there Palestinian terrorists and no Swedish terrorists? - Why did Sicily provide a Mafia to conquer America? - Extremest poverty breeds extremest fighters/survivors, who are naturally attracted to the richest country - So now the Mafia rule America - They are bigger than the 5 biggest corporations together - Quite above the law - As Anacharsis said a long time ago, the great break through the spider's web of the laws - As someone else said: It is not just that the superrich are breaking the laws - they are - but they are making the laws - A US Senate committee in the 1950s reported that big business was more powerful than the govt [see Avro Manhattan, The dollar and the Vatican] - <br><br>Being 'on decease' means that money will feed into the economy gently - From the bottom, the money will feed every level of society, as the money moves up under the power of the rich-get-richer - the constant drift of money towards wealth<br><br>b. An even simpler method, but imperfect, but still very good, is to increase the money supply say 1% at a time and give equal amounts of money to everyone in the country, rich and poor - the inflationary effect will have some effect on diminishing fortunes, and the money appearing at the bottom will feed the economy and reduce violence - Govts of course already increase the money supply and cause inflation this way [which is a sneaky tax], but they give the money to banks to extract money from the people, the perpetual suckers - Over the 30 years of a home loan, the people pay say 3 times the loan in interest - The rich steal the nations's money, and then lend it to the nation at interest - Never give a sucker an even break, is the iron rule of govts - Although 'The purpose of govt is justice' James Madison - 'The poor man pays for all' <br><br>Of course, we are giving the money to everyone for bureaucratic simplicity - No huge cost of determining who should get it - The beauty of it is that the inflationary effect will have a bigger effect on the robbers, the money will have a bigger effect on the robbed<br><br>This again is gentle, avoiding financial shocks - It can be 1% a month - [Regular, anticipatable inflation is much less bad than irregular inflation] - Itis just a question of getting the rich/powerful to let it happen - Which is why this plan emphasises getting a 99+% majority for it as the first step - The smaller the opposition, the better chance of success, and the less violence - <br><br>c. A tax on overpay fortunes of 1/100th the first year, 1/99th the second year, 1/98th the third year and so on, until the overpay is completely returned to its earners - Again this is gentle and painless - Or low-pain, even for the overpaid - This approach utterly prevents 'escape' by fortunes - A fortune of $102 million would decrease by one million every year till the earned part, of $2 million, was reached - the pattern could be repeated every 100 years, thus allowing fortunes to get away to some extent in the early years of the century, and be thoroughly subdued in the later years - This would have the good effect of giving people continuing experience of overpay [at intervals], so they can see its dangers and the wisdom and necessity of controlling it - Otherwise people might forget the need of overpay-control<br><br>Others may have other, better ideas - The Tobin tax is a good, little start - Taxing the $1 trillion moved each day on the stockmarkets 0.25% would certainly provide funds to give everyone a minimal lifestyle [instead of a deathstyle for 100 million a year], which would reduce violence, disease, population growth and the creation of mafias at the bottom end, but how much would it reduce tyranny at the top end?<br><br>12. Setting wage scales - Nothing would be necessary - It is just that when overpay comes down, and the money is fed into the bottom of scoiety, underpay comes up - Everything in capitalism would be unchanged, except the ceaseless drift of money towards the overpaid would be balanced by a reverse motion - This would sort everything else out - Would solve most problems in capitalism - 'There are a million chopping at the branches of the tre of problems for every one who is chopping at the root' Henry Thoreau - Find the root, and chop it, and millions of branch problems die - eg Save the whales - once the overprofit motive is gone, when no one can be overpaid, whale companies will be much more amenable to change or dissolution - Eg Incidents like the Ford Pinto - Again, the overprofit motive gone will reduce temptation to all - Same with pharmaceuticals - Corruption in this industry curbed - And medicine: Suppression of cheap good cures will stop - Agriculture: destruction of soils in the name of profits will diappear - Over-treefelling will disappear - No one will have power to buy felling rights from govts by bribery - Govt will be democratic, because money is power, and money will be spread in proportion to work - The madness of topsoil loss at a rate of 100% per 100 years [as it is now] will be controllable - <br><br>13 & 14. I seem to have answered these above<br><br>'Money is like manure, best when spread' - Francis Bacon, 16th century<br><br>As soon as I prove to myself that I can ignite one person, I am going to try to get published - I will write a compact, 50-100 page version of the plan </span><!--EZCODE FONT END--> <br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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sceneshifter...

Postby robertdreed » Mon Feb 06, 2006 9:47 am

none of what you've said addresses the realities of how economics works. <br><br>For instance, consider this tangent-<br><br><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>Your 50,000 taxfree and 50-50 thereafter is based on what? - It lacks precision -</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> <br><br>"Lacks precision"? I find it to be both precise and succinct. You're the one talking about condensing your notions into a 100 page paper. <br><br><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>It does not go into the question, how much is self-earned, how much other-earned?</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--><br><br>How does anyone quantify that with anything close to the precision required to encode it into law? <br><br>You don't betray the slightest notice that much of Gates fortune is bound up in the business infrastructure that provides his employees with their incomes! If you haven't even gotten that far, why should anyone take you seriously about the rest of it?<br><br><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>I think you will agree that no one can work more than twice as hard as the average of 50 hours a week - But I have gone through all the reasons given for higher-lower hourly pay rate and found nothing that stands up to sense - Not business risk, not 'responsibility and headaches', not brains, merit, natural gifts, not experience, not skill...</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--><br><br>Have you ever run a business? I have. Not very well, but enough to appreciate the difficulties- and hopefully, do better the next time around. Let me tell you- in at least some respects, <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>it is a 24 hour, 7 day-week proposition</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END-->. You don't get to punch out. <br><br>If you're a wage employee and the warehouse floods, it isn't your problem. You'll be told to come back to work in a week or so. You may even be paid for hanging around the house in the meantime. <br><br>But you don't have to scramble into the office to explain to your customers why they won't be getting their deliveries. You don't have the hassle of making flood insurance payments. You don't have to get on the phone to the insurance company to see about getting some compensation for your losses, something which entails having kept detailed records of your inventory- often a project that requires enough man-hours that it may have entailed hiring a bookkeeper, and entrusting your fortune to their honesty and competence. You don't have to double-check their books every so often so you don't have to sweat the possibility that they don't know what they're doing, or that they're ripping you off. You don't have to worry about hiring and firing. You don't have to sift through a sodden mess of goods that you may not have even fully paid for and try to figure out what's salveagable and what isn't. You don't have to pay for renting the dumpsters and special equipment to clean the place up. You don't have to draw down a bank account not merely to buy food and keep a roof over your head until you get called back to work, but to keep your entire future as a viable economic entity from caving in. Not to mention preserving the livelihood of your employees.<br><br>And someone is going to come along and decide that you're overpaid? For which month? <br><br>Your reduction of all activity to "hourly pay rate" is bullshit. It's a fantasy that's the outgrowth of never having done any sort of work other than being someone else's employee. <br><br>"If we pay students"- who's the "we", here? Do we pay students simply for enrolling, or do they actually have to go to class? Is there a certain level of competency required before they can collect a paycheck, or not? Do top-performing students make more, or not? To what extent is being a student adding to the productive wealth of a society? How about if the course load they're taking consists of remedial math, post-modern poetry, and frisbee golf? <br><br>"In general, I claim that the range of work per hour is limited -"<br><br>Well, you can claim anything you want...ever actually hire someone?<br><br>"I think that no one contributes more than 10% more to the social pool of wealth by their work per hour than the average -"<br><br>Based on what? I don't even know why I'm asking- as written, the statment is incoherent...<br><br> "If a person is working, they are working -"<br><br>? Then how do you account for<br><br> "Slacking more than 10% gets noticed and fired -"<br><br>There are a lot of questions being begged there. I'll pose only one: fired by whom? <br><br> "So the average is not pulled down much by invisible slacking"<br><br>You assume that your audience knows what what "invisible slacking" is. I can only speak for myself. I haven't the foggiest idea.<br><br>"- How much harder per hour can an individual work than the average -"<br><br>You make it sound as if human industry was measured in standardized units- like, say, kilocalories. It isn't. And the fact that you don't seem to have picked up on this says volumes about the deficiencies in your argument overall.- leading to "sentences", or, should I say syntactical constructions, like the following:<br><br>"the maximum that one person can do is equal to the amount of wealth production they can do in a state of nature alone, times the efficiency factor of specialisation of labour -"<br><br>I'm looking for the constants in that equation, to no avail. I can't even find sufficient definition of the terms you're employing.<br><br>Your confusion also leads to gross oversimplifications like this: <br><br>"How do I arrive at the figure that an hour's work produces US$15 worth of goods or services? - Total world annual work has to equal total world annual income - World income 1987: $25 trillion, doubling every 12 years at 6% global inflation - So, $50 trillion in 1999 - $75 trillion in 2006 - [See Sprout and Weaver, International distribution of income 1960-1987, Kyklos, v45, 1994, p238-254] - Average size of families: about 6, ie, 1 billion families - equals $75,000 per family - Two adults, working 2500 hours a year each - equals US$15 an hour, paying housewives/mothers as well - When a person works, the major thing they sacrifice is the time - It is time they can't do other work - [The range of energy-sacrifice in jobs is slight, and cost of replacing energy is so small it can be discounted] -"<br><br>That formula is reductive to the point of absurdity. To note just two objections, it presupposes a common global currency, and a standardized cost of living. <br><br>I've enumerated a few of the more elementary problems with your thesis. Let me know if you manage to fix them. <br><br><br><br><br><br><br> <br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br> <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=robertdreed>robertdreed</A> at: 2/6/06 6:54 am<br></i>
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Re: sceneshifter...

Postby sceneshifter » Tue Feb 07, 2006 10:23 pm

<br><br><br>&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& None of what you've said addresses the realities of how economics works. <br><br>For instance, consider this tangent-<br><br>Your 50,000 taxfree and 50-50 thereafter is based on what? - It lacks precision - <br><br>"Lacks precision"? I find it to be both precise and succinct. You're the one talking about condensing your notions into a 100 page paper.&&&&&&&&&&& <br>'The devil's in the details' - And the definition and precision - Darwin took a few pages <br><br>&&&&&&&&&&&&& It does not go into the question: how much is self-earned, how much other-earned?<br><br>How does anyone quantify that with anything close to the precision required to encode it into law?&&&&&&&&&&&&<br>My quantifications of earnership are a lot closer than yours, surely - I don't mean to boast, but I dont think you claim that yours are close - In fact, the fact you say :How does anyone quantify that? shows you have not grappled with that - The basic thought is that when two people sacrifice an hour of their life to produce goods and services for others, their sacrifice is equal, or nearly so - [Invisible slacking is slacking that is unnoticeable because it is less than 10% slacking - Invisible slacking pulls down the average a bit, so a hard worker CAN work a bit harder per hour than the average - but broadly speaking, if a person is working, they are working - it is tiring to try to slack, you have to work hard at not being detected, it is simpler to just work, and, per unit of time, one person cannot work harder than that - That is, most of what people call working harder is in the amount of time spent] - [We have dealt with the point of differences of gifts of nature - It isnt logical to pay a person for having received gifts of nature - It isnt just to make the less gifted finance this higher pay for gifts of nature] - <br><br>We have to look back at the original purpose of workpay, in order to see what is just: workpay is to allow everyone to get the mix of goods they desire when everyone is specialising in work - They make shoes all day [entirely or mostly for others, while others are making things for that person, among others], they get paid, and they buy the mix of things they want - Thus the purpose of money is to facilitate the remixing of goods, under specialisation of work - The fact that the pooling of goods permits taking out more than the person put in, is a naughty sideeffect - an undesirable and soontobe fatal-to-all side-effect - The point is - How can I explain this? - I can't at the moment find simple words to express this, so Ill have to be prolix: Let us assume - JUST FOR A WAY TO EXPRESS THIS - that there are 8 people, and 8 jobs, and they all work 8 hours a day - They each do 1 hour a day on each job - Then they decide to specialise - They each do 8 hours on each job, 1 on each job - And at the end of the day, they exchange the goods of each job - The point is: I still cant express this: There is no reason for differential pay per hour - There is necessity of same pay per hour - The fact that one person may be brainier, or another more skillful, does not mean they should be paid more - Even if we assume momentarily that we will pay differentially, then the brainier etc, can be paid LESS, because to buy the time of the others, and get a complete set of goods, will be cheaper, not dearer - Therefore there is no point in paying differentially - I cant yet think of another way to say it than that <br><br>&&&&&&&&&&&&&&You don't betray the slightest notice that much of Gates's fortune is bound up in the business infrastructure that provides his employees with their incomes! If you haven't even gotten that far, why should anyone take you seriously about the rest of it?&&&&&&&&&&<br>The social wealth in Gates's hands doesn't belong to him - He didnt earn it - You, I am assuming, will grant he doesn't work on average 50,000 times harder per unit of time than the average worker, nor peak at 1,000,000 times harder than the average per hour - The business structure of course can exist without Gates's having legal ownership - Everyone will have all the money they have earned, and when a new industry comes up, people will invest - They will put up savings into new industries, the products of which they desire - The business will belong to the people who did the work - [As I have said, capital formation is highest [and money cheapest] in fairer-pay societies - I have suggested why that is so] - Investment will be democratic - Investment will be in things people [earners] want to invest in, not in what a few want to invest in - it is possible that there are low-profit industries that people want that don't get invested in, because all the money is going into highprofit ventures - which affects enjoyment of work, too<br><br>&&&&&&&&&&&&& I think you will agree that no one can work more than twice as hard as the average of 50 hours a week - But I have gone through all the reasons given for higher-lower hourly pay rate and found nothing that stands up to sense - Not business risk, not 'responsibility and headaches', not brains, merit, natural gifts, not experience, not skill...<br><br>Have you ever run a business? I have. Not very well, but enough to appreciate the difficulties- and hopefully, do better the next time around. Let me tell you - in at least some respects, it is a 24 hour, 7 day-week proposition. You don't get to punch out.&&&&&&&&&&&<br>I did teaching for a while, and that was the same - You never stopped thinking about it - Or I didnt - Perhaps that meant that I would not have been able to do it longterm - I would have drained myself - The task was so much greater than my powers - Even though I didn't have to prepare lessons because it was maths - I remember the calm of my maths teacher - He would come out of his office, write on the board without pressing the chalk hard, explain the day's lesson, set us to work on examples, go back into his office, come out 10 minutes later, and walk around taking questions - It was impressive<br>But there are only 168 hours in a week, and one is sleeping say 56 of those [8 x 7], eating, etc some more of those - 100 hours is the limit - And that is not good for a person - The Japanese have a word for it, for death by work - As I have said, I can see good sense in limiting pay to 50 hours a week, to discourage overwork/underplay - If a person chooses to work longer than that in getting a business up, well, perhaps that is not good - Perhaps it is wiser to say: If you cant do a job in 50 hours a week, dont do it - But you said the person was doing it without pay anyway, so it doesnt enter our discussion - We are talking about not paying more than 50 times the world average hourly payrate per week - Why should a person work longer hours to get a business up and running? - Businesses can be got up and running in 50 hours a week - The leisure time often gives time for better ways of doing things to emerge - I always admired the Prime Minister of NZ for doing the crossword on the flight to work every morning - I figure a man who does that is on top of the job, not the job on top of him - In any case, business risk will be much smaller when there is more money around - The economy much more confident, stable and vigorous - Without limitation of fortunes, the waves in the economy are sickeningly, destructively huge - Often deliberately created, to give more opportunities for creaming money off - Every predictable wave is a money pump, impoverishing the nation, enriching individuals who think they dont care if the nation falls, or waves violently - Allowing the people who make the waves to make money off it [the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, etc] is so selfdestructive, so mad - Just opening the door to thieves - I am perhaps foolish to imagine people can be saved from their disaster - <br><br>&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& If you're a wage employee and the warehouse floods, it isn't your problem. You'll be told to come back to work in a week or so. You may even be paid for hanging around the house in the meantime. <br><br>But you don't have to scramble into the office to explain to your customers why they won't be getting their deliveries. You don't have the hassle of making flood insurance payments. You don't have to get on the phone to the insurance company to see about getting some compensation for your losses, something which entails having kept detailed records of your inventory- often a project that requires enough man-hours that it may have entailed hiring a bookkeeper, and entrusting your fortune to their honesty and competence. You don't have to double-check their books every so often so you don't have to sweat the possibility that they don't know what they're doing, or that they're ripping you off. You don't have to worry about hiring and firing. You don't have to sift through a sodden mess of goods that you may not have even fully paid for and try to figure out what's salveagable and what isn't. You don't have to pay for renting the dumpsters and special equipment to clean the place up. You don't have to draw down a bank account not merely to buy food and keep a roof over your head until you get called back to work, but to keep your entire future as a viable economic entity from caving in. Not to mention preserving the livelihood of your employees.<br><br>And someone is going to come along and decide that you're overpaid? For which month?&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&<br><br>It is ticklish to answer this, because you are sore from the event - What are the elements of your argument here? - Employer has problems - Have to explain to customers - Hassle of payments - Have to get on the phone - Keep detailed records - Have to check bookkeeper's honesty - Worry - Sift through goods - Pay for renting dumpsters - Preserve livelihood of employees - <br>You are under no obligation to preserve livelihood of employees - Nor can you - Only the demand for goods can take care of that - You make an arrangement with them to further your ends - <br>It is your baby - You can't expect employees to care for your baby - They have 'babies' of their own - You don't care for their 'babies' - Nor are you supposed to - Everyone has problems, worries, hassles, payments - You are risking a sprat to catch a mackerel - If a fisherman loses his rod in the stream, and nearly knocks himself out slipping on a rock - Accidents happen - There is nothing unique or noble about an employer that calls for special treatment - An honest employer is trying to make a buck to keep himself - He is contributing to the social pool of wealth and thus creating an entitlement to take an equal amount from the pool - Just like everyone else - You say 'have to' do this, do that, as if it isn't true that everyone 'has to' do certain things - An employer COULD take floods in his stride - Put people to work separating the savable goods, get someone ringing customers - Try to match saved goods with orders, to partially fill orders - Even face having to fold the company - Henry Ford went bankrupt 5 times - You are wanting to be treated as a superior being, as one doing things of superior difficulty, with therefore superior rights - Demanding privileges - Not proud to be a peer among peers - The equal of others - With right to equal treatment - Not glad to join humanity, to be accepted as an equal, as a member - But wanting humanity to look up to you, give you money for your sufferings - You are under-aware of others' problems, hassles, worries, 'babies', have-to's, chores, payments, obligations - You don't 'have to' do anything - You choose to work at the fish you are trying to catch - Like everyone else, you are trying to exchange work for money<br>And everyone is still taking everything they get out of the pool - Causing extinction unawares - Justice is pay for work - But we allow many forms of pay without work - Thinking that this will work to our benefit - Justice [pay in proportion to work] pays 99% of people better, 90% much better,1% worse - In happiness, justice pays everyone 100 times better - And no extinction<br><br>&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Your reduction of all activity to "hourly pay rate" is bullshit. It's a fantasy that's the outgrowth of never having done any sort of work other than being someone else's employee.&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&<br>If it were true that employers do something special, that is not a natural gift, but a sacrifice to them, it would still not justify unlimited fortunes - It would justify payment in proportion to the sacrifice - <br><br>&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& "If we pay students"- who's the "we", here? &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&<br>The 'we' is humanity, the people who are going to decide whether we think this will save us from extinction and centimated happiness<br> &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Do we pay students simply for enrolling, or do they actually have to go to class? Is there a certain level of competency required before they can collect a paycheck, or not? Do top-performing students make more, or not? To what extent is being a student adding to the productive wealth of a society? How about if the course load they're taking consists of remedial math, post-modern poetry, and frisbee golf? &&&&&&&&&&&<br>Of course students would have to pass exams in order to be paid - And they would have to repay the money if they fail - By tertiary level, all students can pass if they work - And society of course would buy only what society can use - There would be quotas on numbers - We can't oblige ourselves to buy more engineers than we want - If someone wanted to do something outside the quota, they would have to pay for it themselves, I guess - But there is room for freedom in quotas, because people can go overseas - The quotas would have to be on a global basis - Top performing students: ideally, if the better performance was due to harder work, ie longer hours working, they would be paid more - Because if a person can pass well without much work, then they have time to grow lettuces, ie, do other things to make money to keep themselves - But that is too difficult to monitor, so it would have to be equal pay - We pay for time spent in one specialism [of which studying is one] so the person can buy the products of the other specialised jobs - <br><br>&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&"In general, I claim that the range of work per hour is limited -"<br><br>Well, you can claim anything you want...ever actually hire someone?&&&&&&&&&&&& - <br>Slacking is noticed and fired, isnt it?<br><br>&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&"I think that no one contributes more than 10% more to the social pool of wealth by their work per hour than the average -"&&&&&&&&&<br>Based on the principle that people are in justice to be paid mostly for time - And the fact that slacking is noticed and fired, and that when a person is working, they are working, and no one works harder per hour than that average - What can a person do? Can one truck driver work harder than another, both driving at the same speed? - Or even different speeds - One person can plant rice faster, but are they working harder, or have they developed a rhythm, got into the swing of it, built up the right muscles? - Their skill is greater, which means their work is easier or no harder - And people should not IN REASON, IN RATIONALITY be paid for skills, which are picked up at no cost to the person in the course of working - A good piano player works less hard per minute than a beginner, who is sweating to do the job, hasn't learned the best muscles, got on top of it - Of course the piano player is to be paid for practising - For that is time they can't grow lettuces or make shoes - Or pianos - But of course not just anyone who wants to learn the piano; I refer to professionals - Does a highly paid CEO race around the office, dictating to ten secretaries simultaneously, reading 50 journals at once? - No, he works about the same pace as anyone - He is freer to slack, for that matter - One person can read 10 times faster, but again, they are not working 10 times harder - It is a gift - If a learned ability, then they are to be paid IN JUSTICE - [We are not proposing to keep tabs on who goes to a rapidreading class, but working out what is just, so that we can set a limit to fortunes - all the inequalities that are too many and variable to monitor, we do not attempt to monitor - not even hours [although businesses obviously will] - we are just arriving at a practical approximation to justice in order to prevent violence, which is always escalative<br><br>&&&&&&&&&&&&Based on what? I don't even know why I'm asking- as written, the statement is incoherent...<br><br>"If a person is working, they are working -"<br><br>? Then how do you account for<br><br>"Slacking more than 10% gets noticed and fired -"<br><br>There are a lot of questions being begged there. I'll pose only one: fired by whom? &&&&&&&&&&<br>Fired by the boss - As I have said, everything in capitalism is unchanged, except unlimitedness of fortunes [and paying students and housewives] - In my opinion, the only major thing wrong with capitalism is the ceaseless unchecked drift of money from earners to nonearners - Which causes violence proportional - Which violence is escalative, even if the injustice [theft] wasnt growing all the time - Because, wherever there is injustice, both sides will be escalating the war in order to prevail - the overpaid to keep, the underpaid to get back their earnings - There doesnt of course need to be perfect justice, only sufficient justice to satisfy people they are not being robbed<br><br>&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&"So the average is not pulled down much by invisible slacking"<br><br>You assume that your audience knows what what "invisible slacking" is. I can only speak for myself. I haven't the foggiest idea.<br><br>"- How much harder per hour can an individual work than the average -"<br><br>You make it sound as if human industry was measured in standardized units- like, say, kilocalories. It isn't. And the fact that you don't seem to have picked up on this says volumes about the deficiencies in your argument overall.&&&&&&&&&&&&&<br>I am showing to what extent human industry IS standardised - If one looks at it without ASSUMING there is some wondrous mystical magic in highly paid jobs - Even if there were some magic in highpaid jobs, it may still be - must still be - a gift, not a sacrifice - The main sacrifice is time that one, in one specialised job, cannot therefore spend in other jobs<br> &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&- - leading to "sentences", or, should I say syntactical constructions, like the following:<br><br>"the maximum that one person can do is equal to the amount of wealth production they can do in a state of nature alone, times the efficiency factor of specialisation of labour -"&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&<br><br>Sorry, it should read: the maximum that one person can EARN...<br>We have no quantification, as far as I am aware, of the efficiency factor of specialising in jobs - I'm not sure it would be possible - But job specialisation must be efficient - Or we have been specialising in jobs for 1000s of years to no purpose -<br> <br>That sentence is just to give people a better idea of the limitations of right-to-pay - To help a little in breaking down the mystical belief that 'somehow' BG earns the money he gets - On a good day, BG can work an hour and buy a $10 million house or factory cash - Now that house or factory has something of the order of a million hours work in it - from buying the land to grow the trees to designing the microwave - Since the world average hourly pay is $10 - Using the 1999 figures, which are nice and round - [2006 hourly rate is closer to $15] - If it wasnt for the efficiency of specialisation factor, we could say: BG's earnings are the amount of wealth he could create by his work in a state of nature in one hour - He couldnt even design the doorhandles - This is a graphic illustration of the difference between his input and his reward - to break down that unthinking mystique explanation of his income - He is one of us - He is not superman - <br><br>Again, there are - must be - plenty of people with all his gifts and powers who have not his income - We know his income is caused by factors independent of his efforts and abilities - The scarcity effect of new technology - You can see it in electricity - Better than gas, cheaper than gas, the sellers could sell it cheaper than gas and still price it well above costs - They got rich, not because of something about them, still less something they did that they should be paid for, but because of relativity to gas - What people were willing to pay bore no close relation to cost of electricity - As long as competition was not effective - And even when competitors come along, there is no guarantee that they will lower prices - They may be happy to move in at the same price level, or a little below - It needs many competitors, as in Japan, to get real competition - And even with stiff competition, prices only tend to descend towards costs, not to arrive at full costs [including all inputs by owners and principals in the company] - And then there are price cartels, legal or illegal, explicit or implicit, overt or covert - oligopolies, hidden monopolies<br><br>&&&&&&&&&&&&&& I'm looking for the constants in that equation, to no avail. I can't even find sufficient definition of the terms you're employing.<br><br>Your confusion also leads to gross oversimplifications like this: <br><br>"How do I arrive at the figure that an hour's work produces US$15 worth of goods or services? - Total world annual work has to equal total world annual income - World income 1987: $25 trillion, doubling every 12 years at 6% global inflation - So, $50 trillion in 1999 - $75 trillion in 2006 - [See Sprout and Weaver, International distribution of income 1960-1987, Kyklos, v45, 1994, p238-254] - Average size of families: about 6, ie, 1 billion families - equals $75,000 per family - Two adults, working 2500 hours a year each - equals US$15 an hour, paying housewives/mothers as well - When a person works, the major thing they sacrifice is the time - It is time they can't do other work - [The range of energy-sacrifice in jobs is slight, and cost of replacing energy is so small it can be discounted] -"<br><br>That formula is reductive to the point of absurdity. To note just two objections, it presupposes a common global currency, and a standardized cost of living.&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&<br>Currencies are equivalent - All currencies can be converted to dollars - Sprout and Weaver did, obviously - One would use PPP figures, not OER figures - Purchase Price Parity figures, not Overseas Exchange Rate figures for equivalence - OER figures are up and down with local events, currency trading, etc - PPP is not perfect - Nothing is - Are the PPP figures out by 10%? - We will never know, because that is the best figure we have - PPP is a standardisation of cost of living - These figures are to give an IDEA of the world average - So people can get an idea of how much wealth they are creating per hour - Without any idea of a world average, people have no idea they are being underpaid - Although it is pretty clear - very clear - from the fantastic overpay - It takes only 6000 people being overpaid up to a million times the average [in equal steps between the average and a million times the av] to take all the wealth in the world - As it is, the overpaid take over 90% - A fantastic situation - And fatal<br>You can get an idea of how much brainwork people will have to do to save ourselves - And your questions are invaluable for the development of FAQs - But it can work if even only the bellwhethers do the brainwork, and the sheeple follow - But it requires enormous discipline [=learning] of making the irrational brainmatter submit to the rational brainmatter - It is the only hope I see - <br>I see no one has been intrigued by my rigorous, rational, rocksolid proofs of our non-bodiness [At 'points to make you happy']<br><br>&&&&&&&&&&&&I've enumerated a few of the more elementary problems with your thesis. Let me know if you manage to fix them.&&&&&&&&&&<br>Thank you for hanging in there, robertdreed - For assuming I may not be an idiot - So far, I still think I'm not - [But that may be because I am an idiot]<br>One way of looking at it simply is to say: People are not happy - We have to spread the money around more, or all die - But isn't it clear that supermoney is tyranny? - Are the superrich lovely people? - The European tyranny that Americans fled from: was it dependent on supermoney? - Is there power without money? - Was Hitler financed? - Will anyone attempt to claim that the extreme range of pay is sense? - Is just? - We KNOW the causes of huge fortunes are not just causes -<br>We KNOW that a govt making payrates range in a country from $1 to one billion dollars a fortnight would generate super-enormous 'disturbance of the peace' - So we KNOW that super-enormous amounts of disturbance of the peace will disappear with removal of payrates from $1 to one billion dollars a fortnight - And defense budgets will be able to decline - Just look at Middle East versus Scandinavia - 50% of GNP on defense versus 2% of GNP on defense - [Most army action is internal - ME has 10-20% 'absolute poverty' - less than $1 a day - less than half a 100th of the world average - and has fabulously wealthy] - And bear in mind that defense doesn't work - You still get enormous destruction and waste and pain - How many houses would still be around, if war had not destroyed them? - And therefore, how much cheaper would rents be? <br><br>Mighty oaks from little acorns grow, robertdreed - What we do here today can be a mighty oak in our lifetimes - Look at the growth of the idea of the car in just 100 years! - Suppose 1000 grow from 1 grasper of this idea in 10 years - In 20 years, that is a million! - In 30 years, a billion! - In 32 years, every adult in the world<br><br>Look at it this way: Putting justice aside for a moment - Suppose tomorrow everyone was being paid the same per hour - 99% would be happier, 1% would be unhappier - But still having most desires and all needs satisfied - and the 1% would be happier by the happiness around them of the 99% - Capital formation would be much higher - Income growth would be much higher - Scientists, entrepreneurs, inventors would be 10 times as many - Many more diseases would become extinct - [Half the hospital beds in the world are filled with waterborne diseases cases - And yet drilling a well for a village only costs $1000! - big savings on health costs!] - Millions in the militaries would be released to have lives - And to be productive, not destructive - Business would be booming, with 10 times as many customers - World safety and friendliness would be through the roof - 99% happier, 1% unhappier - It is a clear, enormous gain - And I show that the 1% will be much happier too! - Unsafety is proportional to overpay/wealth, Rapidly diminishing returns in satisfaction per unit of money, because equal hourly pay satisfies virtually all desires, Security costs unending must devour the fortune, No extinction <br>You have to admit, I think, that this is a powerful argument - I dont see any way anyone could counter that - It looks utterly incontrovertible to me<br>And here is another: If inequality is good, then perfect, 100% inequality is better - But perfect inequality [one person with all, everyone else with nothing] would be perfectly bad - Therefore the 90% perfect inequality we have is not good - <br><br>I just had an idea - I will write it up and then get [pay] someone to read it and mark everything they don't understand, then I will add more till they do understand, then get someone else, and so on <br><br><br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
sceneshifter
 
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Re: sceneshifter...

Postby sceneshifter » Tue Feb 07, 2006 10:29 pm

<br>You say: why would a person go through all the pain of learning to be a neurosurgeon without high pay? - And right there, is the loss of 99% of human happiness - Scott Fitzgerald said: We've used the motivation of money for so long we've forgotten there's any other way - There is only one good reason to be a neurosurgeon: because you want to be one - Because you have a passion for it - Because the brain fascinates you - Because you crave the pleasure of studying it - Because you want to spend a lot of your time learning about it - Making it yield its secrets to you - Because you love it - Because you think it is wonderful - Because you want to know more about the brain - Because all the rest of the world kind of recedes and all your observation of the miracle of life is focussed through this one thing - In other words, because you ARE a neurosurgeon - You were a neurosurgeon before you were old enough to know the name - Because in a world where all jobs are paid the same, you drift ineluctably towards it - You can remember the first time you saw a model of a brain - How it caught your eye - How you demanded to be told about it - How awed you were that there was one inside your head - Your own personal brain - <br><br>In the dawn of science, scientists were scientists freely, from wanting to be scientists - Some were rich, some weren't - But they went where they had to go - Today, science is a business, and all sorts are in it that shouldnt be in it - Who are missing out of the occupation of theri hearts and minds because money, status, influence of parents, corrupted them away from their passion, their love, their true work - So science is grinding into the dust, coming to a stop - Sinking into untruth and politics - Being taken over by warts - Do the work you love and never do a day's work in your life - The greatest duty of a parent is to give the child complete freedom to do what he loves doing - To give every stimulus to find the work the child loves - Whatever it is - Circus, treefelling or nurse - Because the world needs its people to be in love, to be enjoying, to be happy - In order to stimulate others to find the work that gives them that passion, satisfaction, frustration, daily joy - And we all need the people that we encounter and use, to be good at their jobs, to be real whateverjobitis - Not just nurses by qualification, not just nurses because that was the job they could get off work to study, but nurses by heart and soul - Nurses by nature - People who experience the meaning of their selves in that work - Whose souls are fed by that work, its frustrations, sorrows, pleasures and efforts - People who give nurse-soul to their patients<br><br>To not be what we are? - What a theft is that? - Is there any meaning left after losing that? - The meaning of life is to be and do and find yourself and grow in the work that lights your inner bulb - To know that joy is your first duty, your most solemn mission - What is it to a child to have a parent or grandparent who has experienced that - What is it to a child to know to aim for that? - And what is it for a child not to have that? - No wonder life seems meaningless to some people! - Not to get pleasure from what you spend half your time doing? - There ought to be a law against it, it is so poisonous, such a fundamental violation - Vocational guidance should be the most delicate and dedicated science - We have allowed ourselves to be distracted from the purpose of life - Distracted into living shell lives - Living in a dead manner - Whole nations of people going through the motions - How awful is that? - Who is helped by that? - <br><br>'Who would go through the pain of learning without compensation?' - Yes, and the bigger the pain, the bigger the compensation - The more soul-dead the work, the greater the punishment inflicted on clients and customers for your suffering it - Highpaid lawyers and doctors who shouldn't even be doctors and lawyers - Who are lumberjacks, sailors, tennis coaches buried in lawyers' suits - And trying to squeeze a happiness out of money - Find the work you would pay to be able to do, and find someone to pay you to do it - Sometimes it doesn't matter how many brains a person has: they have to smell the salt of the sea - They are sailors with a lot of brains - They cannot be happy squeezed through Harvard and into a lawyer's suit - There cannot be a greater crime than making a person's life incapable of love, of inner glow, of joy of effort in the job that IS you - <br><br>To find that job that lights your inner bulb is a most delicate task - It may be something you think you'd hate - It may be something you've never thought of as you - Because the people you grew up with never thought of it - It may be the job of which all your friends say: What do you want to do THAT for? - And you are afraid of their opinion, though they will not go with you through the days in the wrong job - You have to mentally try on many jobs - Mentally try on jobs you know you would hate, to see what it is about that job that you hate - So you can get a better bearing on what you dont hate -<br><br>If you are a badger, what is more important than spending your days doing badger things in a badger way? - What is worse than being a badger and spending your days doing fox things or bear things? - <br><br>Our sense of our right to do what we are, and our sense of our duty to do what we are, are weak - They need to be strengthened by education - Education weakens those senses, because the child has no opportunity to explore possible jobs, in imagination and reality - They are pumped full of useless data, day in, day out, year in, year out, until they forget their souls - Forget the passion that is the birthright of every creature - They have no leisure at school, in which they could find themselves - Teachers are control freaks, who cannot imagine giving a child freedom - The people who design education systems never imagine giving the child freedom - So much force, so little love in human nature! - Other animals dont interfere with each other.<br><br>One's fitness for a job may be indicated by no more than a gentle anticipation of the day ahead, a smooth flowing through the work, and an absence of clockwatching<br><br>To work in a job that gives you pain, because it gives you more money, prestige, power, position, status! - Poison the world with your adaptation to pain!<br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
sceneshifter
 
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Brother "shifty"

Postby Floyd Smoots » Wed Feb 08, 2006 12:56 am

Take a well-earned vacation, brother man. No one has the earthly power, to do what you advocate. Only God Almighty has the power to fix what's wrong. Just be good to your family, friends, fellow workers, and acquaintences, and it will be alright. Don't trust me. Trust in Jesus. He's the only way that things will get better in these latter days. You could say that it's only MY opinion, but I COULD be right. Otherwise, WHERE are we going to get the "Power" to Promulgate what you Advocate???<br><br>Peace & Love,<br>Brother Floyd<br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Brother "shifty"

Postby AnnaLivia » Mon Feb 20, 2006 10:53 pm

<!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong><br><!--EZCODE FONT START--><span style="color:maroon;font-family:helvetica;font-size:small;"><br><br><br>Robertdreed quoted:<br>It's only part of our twisted national religion that you'd expect more material to want to be a neurosurgeon over a midlevel IT tech.<br> <br>Robertdreed responded:<br>I don't agree. It costs more to be educated as a neurosurgeon than as an IT tech.<br>I respond: A just system will pay students. Therefore this argument of RD fails. <br>RD writes: And beyond the money of it, in terms of the amount of time spent studying, the stresses of exams, the energy required to acquire a level of competence, the sheer talent needed in the form of steady nerves and ability to function in a crisis. And that's all before one even hangs the shingle out.<br>I respond: time spent studying: see above; <br>stresses of exams: a very minor point - people who pass exams have the brains to pass exams; an exam is just a test of competence; there need be no stress involved: you learn enough, you pass; you dont, you dont - this is just bleeting and whining: poor me, poor me; <br>energy required: eating breakfast - more whining; <br>sheer talent, steady nerves, ability to function in crisis: gifts of nature, illogical to pay people for receiving gifts; paying people for gifts uses money of the ungifted and othergifted, which is theft, which produces a backlash: resentment of those paid-for-gifts, eg cultural revolution, nazi hatred of intellectuals, nazi-ism as revenge of the losers [hitler a failed artist] - 'losers' = those penalised for not having gifts of nature<br>In general, this argument of RD's amounts to: me, me, give me, give me, never mind about giving to those others, never mind what they get, give to me, I'm better, I'm more important, Make ME king of the castle - ie, visceral injustice - which generates the escalation of violence to extinction we all suffer from and hate.<br>RD writes:<br>Human behavior is purposive. I think it's natural to expect to be rewarded more for doing what is more difficult, or for what takes more effort, for seeing a personal vision through to completion, for accomplishing greater tasks than lesser ones, for assuming more responsibilities or risks.<br>I respond: the question here is: what is more difficult, what takes more effort? There is no measurement of difficulty or effort, therefore there IS no payment for difficulty or effort. We have only the assumption that neurosurgery is more difficult, which derives from neurosurgeon's self advertisement of difficulty and effort. It is neurosurgeons who are telling us their job is more difficult. And it is the people, the suckers, the fools who are soon parted from their money, who accept this argument from the ones with a vested interest in the argument. The argument is circular: Neurosurgeons are paid more because their work is more difficult; how do we know their work is more difficult?; because they are paid more. <br><br>And that leaves the question of HOW MUCH more they should be paid: it doesnt answer: how much more they should be paid, assuming for the moment they should be paid more. One would have to, not only determine their work is more difficult, and by how much it is more difficult, but also how much money they should be paid for every extra unit of difficulty above the average difficulty of jobs. <br>Adam Smith said that groups getting together, even for social occasions, are in conspiracy to defraud the people. And Shakespeare put it more briefly: there is always theft in limited professions. By limiting numbers, the professions create an element of scarcity, which translates to being able to ask or demand [like a highwayman] higher payment. A good example: when America was being flooded with European doctors, refugees before and during WW2, the AMA did not grow at all: the charlatans who had control kept out a great quantity of very highly qualified European doctors [see The naked empress, by Hans someone]. What do you say when eg doctors in different countries are paid different amounts [because of the scarcity/nonscarcity of eg doctors]? - Since the difference in pay is related to scarcity [often artificially generated by eg doctors], it is clearly not a difference of pay because of difficulty or effort of the job - But these logical sensible arguments will have no impact on the unrational - Even the people who pay these exorbitant fees would rather continue to suffer the injustice than cure the injustice by thinking the arguments through - And the ones with vested interests, for money or ego, will just ignore the rationality of the arguments. Eg, dentists in NZ are a quarter the cost of American dentists. [And the standard is as high or higher.] Part of the truth is that American dentists have higher costs, because they pay more for their equipment: but they pay more for their equipment because they can charge higher fees, because of artificial, dentist-generated scarcity. So 'the poor man pays for all', again. [And then, naturally, justifiably gets p****d off, and the country slides deeper into violence and faster towards revolution, and the world slides faster towards extinction. Justice is worth it. Justice is a bargain, a superbargain. The costs of war are very high - not just in bullets and deaths, but also in lives spent [wasted] in the militaries, defense budgets, lost infrastructures, hospital costs, legal costs.] The poor man and woman pays for the dentist's equipment, pays for the dentist's income.<br>As for 'human behaviour is purposive': Why state the obvious? Because you are subtly implying that higherpaid job people are more purposive. This is another example of self-aggrandisement, of selfinflation to fool the poor out of their earnings. I congratulate all you limited profession people on your great success! [Except that your theft makes you more a target for thieves. A Roman saying: X servants, X enemies. That is, the wealthier: the more enemies, the greater the danger. Which is obvious enough. Plunderers are the prime targets for plunder. Plunder nations are plundered. 'Beggars fear no thieves'.<br>'For seeing a personal vision through to completion' - A personal vision of a way to get rich - 'Do the work that you love doing and you'll never have to do a day's work in your life' - Do the work that you love doing and you will never want to be overcompensated for doing it. - We see here how the failure to find one's love-work feeds into injustice and therefore into violence, war and extinction. And the more skewed pay is to overpay and underpay, the more people are tempted out of their love-work and into their hate-work, for which they want compensation in the form of overpay [= theft, the making of the underpaid]. If all jobs are paid the same hourly rate, then people will have no reason to depart from their lovework, and their jobsatisfaction [ie jobhappiness] will be highest. By lovework, I mean the socially in-demand work [the work that others will pay to have the products of] that the person loves most doing. So we see that by tunnel vision, mental myopia, failure to see the full string of consequences of our decisions and actions, we hurt ourselves - terribly. We are racing towards extinction without a clue, without one correct idea, how we are doing it to ourselves. And for some, our only weapon we have to save ourselves is a smug complacency that we are allknowing, that we are right, that we are well aware, that we are seeing clearly and fully. An aversion against and unfriendliness towards anyone who tries to warn us. A mere exploitation of the discussion to reinforce our ideas [even if we have to ignore the force of the arguments to do it], pat ourselves on the back for being so right. Which is like taking a rubber spoon to a fight with a dragon. Happiness lives in realityville. When you find yourself one day surrounded by nuclear winter, ask yourself: did I seek happiness in reality or in the unreality of my egovisions?<br>'Greater tasks than lesser ones': see above. Try going and telling someone that your tasks are greater ones and their tasks are lesser ones. You won't want to do that: you know it will be resented. And from this you should know that higher pay per unit of work generates resentment - righteous resentment.<br>'Assuming more responsibilities'. Again, a lot of us unthinkingly buy into this notion. But let's look at it hard and close. Again, there is no measurement of responsibility, so there IS no payment for responsibilities [I've already said this and RD has not opened himself to really HEAR this. And don't read me as saying, merely: I want to be paid more, I want you to be paid less so I can be paid more. Give me credit for more dispassion and impartiality than that. Actually, it isn't necessary to give me such credit: just figure it out dispassionately and impartially for yourselves.] Again, there is circularity in the argument: They are paid more, so the jobs they do must be more responsible, therefore they are being paid more for responsibility. What is there in responsibility that deserves to be paid more? Does doing a more responsible job [assuming for the moment there are such things] use up more energy? Does the more responsible job need more body fuelling? With questions like these you can pull away the cobwebs of the 'mystical', ie unthinking, unexamined belief that responsibility ought to be paid for. The responsible job uses up the person about the same as a less responsible job. Of course, if the responsibility means longer hours, justice pays for those. If the resp. means hours of training, justice pays for those. <br>There is another good reason for non-higher pay: Higher pay attracts insincere people, people in it for the money, and their aggression forces out the genuine - You end up with expensive AND inferior work - the worst of both worlds. Eg doctors going for the expensive cancer cures and neglecting, or downright suppressing, the cheaper cancer cures. Politicians being not genuine leaders of the community, but moneygrubbers. Every empire has been strong, and grown, though small, with undistinguished pay for the leaders. And fallen, though large, with extreme overpay of 'leaders'. Genuine leaders like Lincoln don't need the money. Their headache is all the people grubbing for jobs in the government just for the money. [Googlesearch 'global happiness lincoln' for the quotes.]<br>'Risk'. I dealt with this too, but no one thinks they are in any kind of danger that deserves hard, clear, non-ego, non-customary, rational, sensible thinking. People's attitude is: Well, we have problems, but I hope things are not so desperate that we have to really THINK, and think logically, sanely, sensibly. You are confident that the Palestinians can't conquer you. But consider: the Sicilians conquered you. They stole enough in America [the numbers game, prohibition, etc] to be able to buy protection from the law. Obviously, the FBI, the CIA, the police forces of 52 states are not powerful enough to clear America of the Mafia. The Mafia, bigger than the five biggest corporations together. And GM is bigger than Turkey. And then there is the Irish Mafia, the Texas Mafia, the Russian Mafia, etc, etc.<br>Risk: People ARE not paid for risk: there is no one measuring risk and going around paying for it. There is no one going to the people who have been overpaid for risk and taking something off them. Moreover, business people do their best to REDUCE risk. A way of measuring worker risk would be to determine how many workers are killed in the various jobs. Few employers risk death. But the worker is invisible, he is treated as nothing, as not human: the continuing popularity of slavery as a happiness technique. If you look at the WHOLE string of consequences, slavery is clearly NOT a method of happiness. We just need to look. Every slavemaster culture has been torn down. [Economists have shown that slaveholding is economically less efficient.] No one is suggesting paying the goldprospector for risk, or the hotdog stand owner. No, it is just businessmen bleating: I'm a hero, others are not; what I do is noble far, gimme, take off others and gimme. <br>People CANNOT be paid for risk: risk is risk of losing your sprat when you try to catch a mackerel in the business world: if you were paid for risk, the pay for risk would reduce the risk, reducing the payment for risk, etc. Risk is risk of losing your investment: if one were paid for it, it would reduce the risk. Payment for risk is therefore selfcontradictory. <br>People OUGHT not be paid for risk: Paying for risk would increase risktaking. Risktaking would increase dramatically until all the money in the country was paying for risk. These are good arguments. Will anyone absorb them, or will everyone resent the arguments for dragging people out from their 'comfort' zone. [Not comfortable at all, with extinction silos in your backyard.] <br>RD wrote: <br><br>See, I think Ayn Rand made some valid points within the context of her Objectivist philosophy (although I don't buy the whole package.) I think authentic meritocracy ought to be respected. It's disastrous all around for the most talented, industrious, creative, inventive, enterprising, intellectually gifted, physically proficient, and/or ethical risk-taking mentalities to have their motivations, ambitions, and dreams knee-capped by second-guessers, armchair political theorists, critics and onlookers who have never entered the arena themselves.<br>I reply: <br>I remind you [again, RD refused to absorb it] of my VERY STRONG argument, that if you are going to talk about 'kneecapping' [a violent, emotive and therefore undispassionate ex-pression], then your argument works on my side, since 99% are higher paid under fairpay capitalism, 90% are 10 to a 1000 times better paid. Under unfairpay capitalism [under which we live, suffer unnecessarily in millions of ways, and await extinction], 1% have average hourly pay. Under fairpay capitalism, 100% have average hourly pay. Which is going to be better for entrepreneurship, invention, science, art, etc? Clearly, fairpay capitalism will produce 100 times as many entrepreneurs, inventors, scientists, etc as unfairpay capitalism. Can you counter that argument? [It isn't about you versus me, reader, it is about you versus reality. I am nothing to you, you will never meet me, probably, but you will meet reality - and reality will not compromise.] <br>'Second-guessers, armchair political theorists, critics and onlookers who have never entered the arena themselves' This is RD's only argument in response to the arguments I have presented, and it is fallacious. That is, no argument at all. Obviously, it is no rational response to the arguments that the presenter of the arguments is this or that. And RD has no evidence that I am any of those things, secondguessser, armchair theorist, onlooker who has never entered the arena. What does it tell us, that a replyer has no arguments against the arguments presented except a fallacious argument based on no evidence? It is a false conclusion that the arguments are wrong because the replier can throw mud at the presenter. The presenter's disappearance does not affect the existence of the arguments. If the arguments are true, then reality is such-and-such. A libel, a smearing of the character of the presenter, the fact that the replier throws mud at the presenter, does not alter that. <br>What does it mean that a replier has no arguments in reply, and resorts to throwing mud? It shows a total lack of interest in reality, and therefore a total lack of commitment to pursuit of happiness. What could make a person totally divorced from pursuit of reality and happiness? In other words, what could make a person totally selfdestructive? What could make a person sweep aside strong clear arguments, not check them out, not taste them, not chew them over, to extract any good that might be in them, and instead turn to expressing contempt, based on things he has no way of knowing the truth of? No interest in arguments. Not even arguments clearly offered in good faith to save everyone from the vast unnecessary pain we are in. It is not easy for any of us to face the idea we are wrong and have been wrong, but it sure beats misery. The truth will set you free but first it'll piss you off. the truth will piss you off but it will set you free from bumping into the furniture. Pride [holding on to opinions for ego-'reasons', not reality-reasons, not real reasons] is 100% selfdestructive. <br>In that sentence [It's disastrous...], there is an effort to paint me as an enemy of the most talented, industrious, inventive, enterprising, intellectually gifted, physically proficient and ethical risktaking mentalities. A very definite attempt at a great slander, based on zero evidence. The animosity, aroused to such a great slander [which is a crime, which makes him a criminal], can only have been caused by the threat felt by an ego to invasion of 'his' opinions, in short, by a bigot, by someone not interested in truth [on which happiness depends] but only interested in magnifying his ego and to hell with reality. That is, a suicidally reckless person. Throwing himself about the room and refusing to heed where the furniture is. Someone who doesn't care how powerful the arguments are. If they aren't his opinions, then to hell with them, and to hell with reality. A selfdestructive and other-destructive person. A continuous danger to himself and others. <br>God = reality, existence, life, everything that exists, truth, reality, sanity, humility, facing reality. God is I AM. That is, the essence or nature of god is existence. Existence is god. Anything that exists is god. What is more to be paid attention to, to be feared and respected, than reality? Satan/devil/Belial is unreality, nonexistence, ego-generated pseudo-'reality', selfdestruction, insanity, psychosis, hallucination, selfdeception, pride, denial of reality, head-in-sand-ism. The worship of a notion of god as something different from life/everything/existence is idolatry, is worshipping something other than life/existence. Only existence, energy plus matter, potential plus actual, creative universe and created universe, is god. Most Christians have a notion of god that is different from existence/life/reality/universe/everything, and are worshipping something other than, less than everything. The god they believe in has things outside him; therefore their god is limited, finite: Finite means ending. Anything that has anything outside it, is ending/finite, and therefore an idol. Most christians are, from ignorance and confused selfcontradictory ideas, breaking the first commandment. God is infinite, unlimited. God = everything. The infinite cannot be comprehended, because it is infinite, unlimited. Most Christians have an idea/notion/image of god, which they comprehend, and is therefore finite, therefore an idol. One way to realise god is to go around saying: this is god, this is god, of everything you see. That helps destroy having an idea of god, which is to have an idol god. True god is as rich as life itself. God is life itself. What else is there? <br>Happiness lives in Realityville. The greatest general is the one who faces facts, and energetically seeks realities to face. Humility is facing facts, facing reality, seeking out truth, in order to be happy. Happiness is all of duty. 'Satan', the 'devil', means: trying to get by without facing facts, facing reality, seeking out truth with all sincerity and powers. 'Belial', another name for the devil, means 'destructiveness, uselessness'. I don't have to claim to be right. I present the arguments, the ideas, and people chew out the good, if any. A friend is one who takes the wheat of our words and with a breath of kindness blows the chaff away. To be friendly to others is to do yourself a favour. Is to create a nicer world for yourself. If we were sane, we would be polite, friendly, fair, for our own happiness, just so that our world was less polluted with enemies and impolitieness, unfriendliness and unfairness. <br> RD wrote:<br> <br>That's a different matter than being rewarded for incompetence, chicanery, or criminality. But this idea that anyone who makes more than $75,000 per year must therefore be thieving from the less fortunate is nonsense.<br>I reply: <br>I have presented some of the arguments that it is not non-sense; all RD has done is say, still, that it is nonsense. Ie, zero thinking. I guess RD and others are very confident that we are in no danger that deserves cool thinking to get us out of. I argue again: If there was a 1% chance of a bomb going off in your house and killing you, you would do something intelligent to save you and yours. Most people would agree that there is at least a 1% chance of nuclear winter. Therefore there is at least a 1% chance of a bomb going off and destroying your house and body. I argue that the only thing historically that has always been more powerful than the superrich supertyrants is the people. So our only hope is arousing the people to seeing the way to go. So our only hope is hard thinking, chewing the points over, digesting them, holding on to the things that seem after deep thought to be right, and spreading the word. This is [appears to me to be] the superbargain of all time. We can ALL ALL ALL ALL survive and be much happier. Since it is VERY beneficial to ALL humans, we can get unanimity. Assuming the arguments are sound, and people think them through. <br><br>Otherwise we all die. <br>99% benefit financially, so getting 99% agreement is very possible. Even some of those 1% who will have less money under fairpay [but will have all they have earned] will be capable of grasping the arguments that they will be much happier. The hardcore of unconvincables will be in such a great minority, they will have insufficient power to control the great majority. When the great majority clarifies its thinking sufficiently to SEE and KNOW that the wealthy are wealthy with others' earnings, and that overpay/underpay is the cause of violence escalative to extinction, then overpay will not be tolerated. There are reasons for hope that it will be done. There are reasons for fearing it will not be done. The reasons for fearing it will not be done, are all fears that people will not or cannot think purely from rational sensible foundations: that people will continue to put faith in the various forms of not-thinking: appeal to custom and other fallacious 'arguments', like RD's fallacious ad hominem 'argument', above; his selfdestructive refusal to consider, to take to heart, to test, soberly and seriously and selflovingly, the arguments I have given.<br>Appeal to custom is a species of the fallacious argument to authority: most people believe it, so it must be true.<br>An ad hominem attack, a personal attack, is the reverse of the fallacious argument to authority: the person who believes it is a nobody, so it must be wrong.<br><br>Fallacious arguments are the refuge of those who would rather die than face the possibility of being wrong. Truthseekers are always willing to be wrong. Truthseekers [happiness-seekers, the sane] are always happy to give up an idea that seems wrong. Ego-inflaters will stick to their opinions, right or wrong. Like the pseudo-patriots who say, my country, right or wrong. They forget that being wrong is blindness, which is dangerous and fatal. Falling into ditches. Humanity has been in a ditch for 1000s of years, digging their way deeper to extinction. Ego/pride/vanity/denial/blindness is selfcrucifixion. Have we had enough of being crucified by our attachment to selfcontradictory opinions? The price is facing the [obvious] fact that we can be wrong. The price is an open mind, a thinking mind. The price is death to false pride. Attachment to ego is attachment to what we have become. Attachment to truth is attachment to what we can become, which is unlimited growth, endless growth and endlessly greater happiness. </span><!--EZCODE FONT END--></strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--></em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> <p></p><i></i>
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Oh, No, Girlfriend, You Didn't!!!!!!!!

Postby Floyd Smoots » Mon Feb 20, 2006 11:37 pm

DANG, sceneshifter, you DIDN'T REALLY hijack your "lady friend's" SCREEN-NAME to post this "wallpaper", DID YOU???????? No one here reads all the way through your long-winded posts BECAUSE it's ALWAYS the same screaming "me-me" rant. I only apologize to the other R.I.'ers for "Bumping You Up" to the top of the post chain.<br><br>Unconvinced Floyd<br> <p></p><i></i>
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Dear Beloved Loveywovey bestest-ever Friend-in-Jesus Floyd

Postby sceneshifter » Tue Feb 21, 2006 2:27 am

<!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong><!--EZCODE FONT START--><span style="color:red;font-family:comic sans ms;font-size:xx-small;">For reading my wallpaper as a me-me rant, you get, i'm so so sos sososososososososososo sorry, 0.000000003% for comprehension - i realise that knowing you are now famous for being the only person with a score below 1% in comprehension will be little consolation in your grief at so low a mark<br><br>my arms are comforting you every second that you suffer in grief - cyber-agape cyber-agape cyber-agape<br><br>yes, floyd, the horrrible horrible horrible has occurred - annalivia has turned up in real spacetime and thus made contact in a non-cyberspace way - unbelievable! <br><br>do you remember real spacetime, floyd, that impure arena made by one 'god'?<br><br>sobsob<br><br>i hope you can find it in your heart to one day forgive me this shameful violation of cyberspace etiquette<br><br>omigod, i didnt see she wasnt logged out - the shame, the shame, the SHAME!!!!<br><br>real spacetime - why o why o why did we do it?</span><!--EZCODE FONT END--></strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Dear Beloved Loveywovey bestest-ever Friend-in-Jesus Flo

Postby robertdreed » Tue Feb 21, 2006 3:14 am

"RD has no evidence that I am any of those things, secondguessser, armchair theorist, onlooker who has never entered the arena." <br><br>That's RDR, tyvm. <br><br>My evidence is the unreality of your ideas. <br><br>Prove me wrong. Ever own a business? Ever meet a payroll?<br><br> Are you a self-employed professional? If so, are you willing to have your pay scale arbitrarily limited by someone else, despite the fact that the market- your clients- are willing to pay you more? <br><br>You still aren't being very specific about how your "fairpay" is going to be disbursed, incidentally. However, i take it as implicit in the scheme that all income generated by any economic activity will have to be put into a common pool before redistribution. That would seem to be axiomatic to me. It would take an IRS that's bigger, more powerful, and more intrusive than the East German Stasi was, but apparently you have no problem with that. <br><br>There are so many unstated assumptions in your manifestoes that it's too much trouble to catalog them all. But, to bring up just one- what makes you so certain that "99%" of the people would be sold on your idea, that as soon as they heard it explained its obvious wisdom would be undeniable to them? I doubt that you could even get find that much consensus for your ideas at the local hotel worker's union, much less from the citizenry at large. <br><br>Anyway, since you brought it up- what's your work history? How are you employed? How do you get your income? <br><br>As I've said, I have a limited amount of time to spend busting people's soap-bubble utopian schemes. But I can spare little, now and then. <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=robertdreed>robertdreed</A> at: 2/21/06 12:29 am<br></i>
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Re: Dear Beloved Loveywovey bestest-ever Friend-in-Jesus Flo

Postby Dreams End » Tue Feb 21, 2006 3:23 am

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Bill Gates was one of the very few individuals who were the progentors of the modern computer industry- founders of an entirely new sector of the economy, simply as the result of their ideas and inventions.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>No, he was just the first to charge for it. All the other hackers were busily swapping code like baseball cards and Gates goes out and starts selling the stuff at outrageous prices. Admittedly, this did probably push it out beyond the limited world of computer hackers and hobbyists, but at what cost?<br><br>Oh yeah, and don't believe the hype. Gates didn't invent "Basic", he simply adopted it for the first home/hobbyist computer model, the Altair (wouldn't I like to have one of THOSE). The original developers had long before put BASIC in the public domain. In other words, Gates made his billions by marketing PUBLIC DOMAIN software. <br><br>I don't think he was even the first to port BASIC to the Altair. Just the best marketer.<br><br>I know this seems like a tiny side issue, but it is possible to get technical expertise and quality without the profit motive. I'm using a free web browser on a free operating system <br><br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://en.opensuse.org/Welcome_to_openSUSE.org">(Suse 10.0)</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br><br>to type this message. And Suse is sharper looking than Windows and with enhancements in a few months or sooner, will actually "outvista" Vista. <br><br>All done by a combination of volunteers maintaining and developing code and corporations (Novell, in this case) bound by conviction or else the restrictions (as in LACK of restrictions allowed) in using the Linux "kernel" for an OS. They HAVE to share, whether they want to or not.<br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr><br>"I'm not after the destruction of Microsoft. Really not. That will be a totally unintended side-effect." -- Linus B. Torvalds.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Dear Beloved Loveywovey bestest-ever Friend-in-Jesus Flo

Postby robertdreed » Tue Feb 21, 2006 3:31 am

Yeah, I wonder how Linus Torvalds would feel about having his income- and everyone else's- forcibly limited to $15 an hour- which is the essence of the "fairpay" scheme, I gather. <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=robertdreed>robertdreed</A> at: 2/21/06 1:00 am<br></i>
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Re: Dear Beloved Loveywovey bestest-ever Friend-in-Jesus Flo

Postby Dreams End » Tue Feb 21, 2006 12:15 pm

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Yeah, I wonder how Linus Torvalds would feel about having his income- and everyone else's- forcibly limited to $15 an hour- which is the essence of the "fairpay" scheme, I gather.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>Well, he'd still be cranking out free code. That's for sure. <br><br>I haven't followed this thread too closely. I like paragraphs and the colors give me a headache. Also, quantity and quality are not really interchangeable. Having read a post or two of scenshifter they were too vague for my taste.<br><br>That said, one doesn't go around simply limiting income. There's all kinds of other issues here. For example, I'm perfectly happy to have a limited income if my needs can be met with that income and the needs of others can be as well. For example, I pay too much for health insurance, and mine is cheap compared to most. At 15 bucks an hour, I pay about 15 hours a month for insurance. <br><br>I also pay to maintain a car as our mass transit here completely sucks. And I can't afford a cab!<br><br>In general, the gap between highest and lowest paid workers in the US is obscene and getting more so. Here, you can absolutely wreck a company as CEO and get tens of millions in bonuses while the guy whose pension fund you just raided gets jack. If he lives here in Tennessee, in fact, he probably just had his Tenncare health insurance terminated or his medications limited to 5 per month. THIS is the American capitalist story. Especially these days...cough...FORD MOTOR COMPANY...cough cough....SUPERBOWL...cough....30,000.<br><br><br>Anyway, no time to post much today. I just can't ever pass up a chance to dig at Gates and the "secret software" crowd.<br> <p></p><i></i>
Dreams End
 

reply to RDR

Postby sceneshifter » Tue Feb 21, 2006 11:53 pm

<!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong><br><!--EZCODE FONT START--><span style="color:maroon;font-family:helvetica;font-size:small;"><br>RDR quoted and commented:<br>"RD has no evidence that I am any of those things, secondguessser, armchair theorist, onlooker who has never entered the arena." <br>That's RDR, tyvm. <br>My evidence is the unreality of your ideas.<br>I reply:<br>What's tyvm? When you say 'my evidence is the unreality of your ideas' you are prejudging the issue - ie, exhibiting pre-judice, closedmindedness. The reality or otherwise of my ideas [or these ideas, for they are in the air] is the thing under discussion. Unreality is not so easily determined - by a conscientious thinker. <br><br><br>RDR wrote:<br>Prove me wrong. Ever own a business? Ever meet a payroll?<br>Are you a self-employed professional? If so, are you willing to have your pay scale arbitrarily limited by someone else, despite the fact that the market- your clients- are willing to pay you more?<br>I reply: <br>You are continuing a personal attack, an adhominem ['to the person'] argument [fallacious]: throwing mud is not an argument. You are trying to bring me into disrepute and contempt [libel or slander, depending on whether internet talk is talk or writing]. It is obviously fallacious to argue: he is this or that, therefore his ideas are wrong. There is animus in your replies. There is lack of goodwill. Why the heat? It can only be because I annoy you. How does the presentation of ideas with good intentions annoy anyone? A sane reaction to the presentation of ideas [right or wrong] that are attempting to rescue all individuals from vast unnecessary pain is to feel tender towards someone with such good intentions. Why the heat? <br><br>Perhaps you are not aware that you are suffering unnecessarily. Perhaps you are confident that you are in no danger of extinction. I do not think that that is a rational response to the realities of life on this planet at this time. The heat is a symptom of your suffering. There are deep frustrations in your life. You exhibit anger, brutality towards an innocent. That is a sign of unhappiness in your life. There are a lot of people - about 6 billion - feeling as bad or worse. And that anger does not tend towards peace. Your animus has a cause. Your animus is a fruit on the tree of the world situation.<br><br>'Prove me wrong': You don't realise that you are saying: Only people who own a business, meet a payroll, are selfemployed professionals can be right. You are saying: If you are not one of these, shut the fuck up and take whatever you get from entitled people. If that were true, none of us could have a correct opinion. If that were true, none of us would qualify: Everyone of us has very limited experience. But we have books and other media as sources of information, which enriches our experience, so that one can have ideas far beyond our personal experience. This is true of all thinkers. Your limitation of the right to speak would exclude most economists. <br><br>So you see that your opinion is far from realistic. You show your judgement to be poor, by making this elementary mistake. Your heat is tainting your light. And your light is the only thing that leads to happiness. Heat leads away from it. Heat is selfdestruction. You are destroying yourself. Are you so angry at the world that you will hate a friend? A friend is one who warns you, or tries to. Are you so angry at life that your anger is directed toward someone who points towards a way out of your pain/frustration? You are proving the general unhappiness. You are voicing the desperation and sadness of people who can't find a way out.<br> <br>I posted 'points to make you happy' and no one has replied. Have we gone so far in rage and despair that we are immune to a way out? Are we so sad and maddened by our life that we curse anyone who points a way out? Yes, we are that sad, we are that upset, we are that 'enwildened' by the low level of happiness we have attained. The tremendous efforts of centuries has lead us terribly far downhill, not uphill at all. It is very sad, very bad.<br> <br>I am saying that everyone who will think on the full length of string of real consequences of unbridled overunderpay will be very very very glad to have equal hourly pay, for very strong selfinterest reasons. I am saying what is so hard for people to imagine, what is so far from accepted ideas, from custom. But then custom is so far from happiness. With custom so far from happiness, it is amazing that we continue to have such faith in custom, and that we are still so prone to abhor and maltreat a person who suggests that such and such is a better custom. <br> <br>You persist in imagining what I talk about as an enforced imposition. There is no force here. Just a belief that there is a way that ALL will consider much much much better if they can get to think on it dispassionately, ie, think on it really, think on it truely. The force of custom, the force of clinging to familiar ways, to familiar patterns of thought, is the enemy. It is locking us into a blindness that injures us all, enormously. I repeat that testing the soundness of our notions cannot be bad. It will confirm the goodness or the badness of our ideas. The railwayman taps the wheels of the train. If the wheels are sound, good. If the wheels are cracked, good again, we save a nasty accident. <br><br>We deny our suffering, and so we prevent the searching for solutions. We resent the implication that we are not happy, and so we block oursleves off from solutions. The sleeping person being consumed by fleas cannot do anything. Waking up is never bad. Whether on waking we experience happiness or unhappiness, in both cases waking is good. Always be dissatisfied. Always find out the area of discomfort. Only then can solutions have any value to us. <br><br>If I talk about the problems I may only push people further into despair and rage at life. If I only talk of solutions, no one thinks they need a solution. Searching for solutions to problems, increasing comfort is the purpose of life. Denial denies us this unalienable right. Head-in-the-sand ostriches did not survive. The reality principle is maturity. The unreality principle is living in ditches. Humanity has been living for millenia in the ditch dug by our unexamined faith in everyone-grab-all-you-can, whatever-I-grab-is-mine, anyone-who-grabs-off-me-is-wrong-wicked-criminal-and deserves-punishment. We are all grabbing, being grabbed from, punishing others, being punished. And there is enough for all to be very comfortably off, with NO having to grabgrabgrab, NO need to defend oneself perpetually from grabbers. <br><br>Is this hard to understand? It obviously is, since we havent grasped it in millenia. Although we tell our children to share, we dont KNOW sharing is better for ALL. [And when I say sharing, I mean only: equal hourly pay, not giving to both workers and nonworkers.]<br><br>Please tell me if you think the world would be a much happier, more peaceful place if everyone, including housewives and tertiary students, had equal hourly payrates, in 2006 it would be circa US$15 an hour, doubling every 12 years with 6% global inflation, if every family working average hard was on US$75,000 a year, which they would be if no one was being overpaid.<br><br>Please tell me if you think that hourly pay from 1c to $10 million is good and right and just, and not tyranny and slavery most extreme, and is not a cause of resentment and violence, terrorism and crime, genocide and the 60 times extinction-capacity of our bombs. Are bombs nice things? Are bigger bombs nicer?<br><br>Your attitude of heat is surely extraordinary. The general lack of interest in ways out of this hell we are in is amazing, extraordinary, wild, dazzling. Chimpanzees who grasped the reality would be most concerned.<br><br>Surely you see that the pool of social wealth is limited, not unlimited? The sum of work that creates that pool of wealth is limited. The number of people is limited. The number of hours is finite. The work capacity of the body is limited. The resources are finite. There is nothing infinite except the totality of energy and matter, of creative potential of energy. Maybe not even that. <br><br>So it is surely clear that grab-all-you-can is going to lead to overpay and underpay. And as overpay is overpower, it is going to lead to tyranny and oppression, endless theft. And theft generates violence. And violence is going to be escalative, vendetta-style. And surely it is clear that history shows this pattern, without exception. You surely know that war and weaponry have escalated for centuries, for millenia. You surely know that no caveman had billions in wealth. Unlimited fortunes, unlimited outtake from the pool of wealth, when there is limited input into the pool, has got to be very simply clearly wrong, very clearly theft, very clearly the origin of violence escalating to extinction. [Since money is so good, being a joker good, good for millions of things, necesssities and pleasures and powers and freedoms.] <br><br>You see limitation of fortunes as an invasion of your fundamental liberty. But remember that liberty stops when it impacts negatively on others. And overpay clearly does impact negatively. The universal liberty to unlimited fortunes is also unlimited freedom of others to rob you. Leading inevitably to perpetual ceaseless exhausting grab-and-grabbed-from. When Bill Gates can work an hour and then buy a $10 million house or factory without going into debt, he puts in one hour and takes out something of the order of a million hours' work. Clearly he could not build such a house or factory in one hour. Nor in two hours or 100 or 1000. <br><br>If you are thinking that we dont want MORE interference with liberties by government, understand that if the daily theft of 90% of earnings is stopped, there need be very few other restrictions. Many of the restricitions we are all under are restrictions imposed by the will and wishes and convenience of the superoverpaid, superpowerful. <br><br>The very novel thinking that I am suggesting will reduce our pain suffering and danger enormously is thus: If I get overpaid, others must be underpaid - If others are underpaid relative to me, they are -righteously- resentful. That will lead to friction. I will have committed a theft. I will have stolen what does not belong to me from the pool of wealth. If this overpay is permitted without limit, overpay and underpay and violence will grow and grow and grow. Tyranny and slavery, anger and violence, corruption and cruelty will grow and grow. This will not be good for my happiness. Therefore I will abjure overpay, in my own interests. Money is good, so more money may seem to be always better, and the restriction of the liberty to grab unlimited more will limit my happiness. but if i can have unlimited more, so can everyone else, and so I may end up a loser, not a winner. Grab-all-you-can will work for me in one way, work against me in others ways. My liberty to grab all I can will work for me, but everyone else's grab-all-you-can will work against me. And the fact is, that so far has unlimited fortunes gone, after so many years, that now 99% are worse off with grab all you can - and the 1% are worse off in that the security cost in money and lives is proportional to overpay, but the benefits of overpay suffer rapidly diminishing returns because most desires are satisfied by fairpay. Plunderers' lives and wealth are consumed by security necessities, paranoia and danger, and the gain in pleasure is marginal.<br><br>Surely these points are good enough sense to merit respect, and even tentative agreement. We are seeing the immediate consequences of unlimited fortunes - freedom to grab all - but not the secondary consequences - being grabbed from, grabbing and being grabbed from, endlessly, exhaustingly, escalatingly and extinction-climaxingly.<br><br>Your heat, I see now [it should have been obvious to me], is based on my attack on the immediate consequences, which are good and which you rightly desire, and not seeing the further consequences which are the relentless exhausted historical nightmare and final fatality to all, which you do not desire, which drain your quality of life and your liberty. Through some limitation of the human intelligence, we have not seen these simple points todate.<br><br>You will grant, I think, that your contribution to society is limited, is finite, not infinite. You will grant therefore that unlimited reward is theft. You will grant that theft is not among your unalienable liberties. Therefore, as one knowing that the causing of injuries is usually revenged, or is often revenged, or will put you in danger of revenge, you will wish to seek knowledge of your fairshare, so you can prevent injury to yourself. You will seek knowledge of justice in pay, because approximation to justice in pay will ensure a high standard of quality of life for you. About 100 times higher than you have at present. And what figure can we put on freedom from extinction-probability, freedom from grabbing and being grabbed from, an atmosphere of extreme anger and violence? 9/11 seriously erodes everyone's happiness. Human nature is so much less nice under the enormous strain of superoverunderpay. Like a nice dog beaten and starved to savagery.<br><br>RDR says:<br>You still aren't being very specific about how your "fairpay" is going to be disbursed, incidentally. However, I take it as implicit in the scheme that all income generated by any economic activity will have to be put into a common pool before redistribution. That would seem to be axiomatic to me. It would take an IRS that's bigger, more powerful, and more intrusive than the East German Stasi was, but apparently you have no problem with that.<br>I reply: <br>I have outlined several schemes that meet the necessities of low impact and effectiveness. I don't know if you have read those. <br><br>Eg, increasing the money supply say 1% a time, and distributing the 1% of money to all bank account holders equally, rich and poor. [To save enormous bureaucratic cost of deciding who whould get paid, and danger of corruption and theft in bureaucracy.] People will soon get a bank account when they know they are going to get money put in it. The 1% inflation will deflate the value of the money by 1%, which will have some effect on reducing the fortunes of the overpaid. [Less than desirable.] The money will reduce the underpay of the most underpaid. [Governments of course do this inflation now [a sneaky tax] but give the money to the banks to lend at interest. Ie, the people' money is deflated AND they have to borrow the money thus stolen from them, paying back many times the loan in the course of the loan.] The money entering at the bottom of the economic pyramid will refresh all layers of the pyramid as money works its way back to the overpaid. ['The rich get richer', money drifts automatically from underpaid earners to overpaid nonearners, the trickle-up fact.] Repeated such inflations will lower the pyramid of overpay and underpay, reducing violence generated by overpay and underpay, saving violence costs in lives and money.<br><br>When you write: I take it as implicit that all income will have to be put in a common pool, I know you have not read my posts. You write what I haven't written, you ascribe to me your own inventions of what I mean, and then argue against the thing I never said. Weird. But 'apparently you have no problem with that' is a nice bit of sarcasm. Pity it is directed only towards your own idea of my idea. 'That would seem to be axiomatic to me'. Sublime. Make up your own ideas, attribute them to me, and then be sarcastic at them. <br><br>RDR wrote:<br><br>There are so many unstated assumptions in your manifestoes, that it's too much trouble to catalog them all. But, to bring up just one - what makes you so certain that "99%" of the people would be sold on your idea, that as soon as they heard it explained, its obvious wisdom would be undeniable to them? I doubt that you could even get find that much consensus for your ideas at the local hotel worker's union, much less from the citizenry at large.<br>I reply:<br>Goodness, you reply without reading me. How many times have I said that 99% of people are underpaid, and therefore will be better paid under equal hourly pay? That should sell them on the idea, shouldn't it? <br><br>90% will be 10 to a 1000 times better paid, because they are now paid between a 10th and a 1000th of the wealth they create by their work. Ie, family incomes for 90% of human families are between US$7500 and $75 a year. [The low end, of course, causing starvation for 50 million a year.] 90% of world work earnings goes to the overpaid who didn't create the wealth by work. <br><br>'The rich get richer': everyone knows this doesn't mean the rich work harder and harder in proportion to their hourly pay, ie, it is theft, legal theft. Everyone knows that the more underpaid, the harder they are forced to work. The state of the world is a state of extreme tyranny, brutality, theft and slavery, of forced labour, of giant theft. There is enough income for every family to receive US$75,000 a year, in return for average hardness of working. That is what every family earns. That is the average wealth they create by their work. And of course most of the underpaid are forced to work MORE than average. The thieves convince themselves and others [the silent majority] that it is not so, but it is. <br><br>And it is counterproductive for the thieves too. Extinction is not a positive outcome. The organised crime bosses who got sprayed with bullets had made a happiness strategy error: they underestimated the virulence of antagonism to their thefts. Hitler made a happiness strategy error. All overpaid people are suffering. Anyone who steals from the tribe loses the tribe. The human tribe is the most fun for humans. The Duke of Westminster tries to get together with the men in the local pub. A bandit must flee human society, hang out with other bandits, and fear being killed by his only company. This is not good for mental health. It is the same for CEOs. Corporate infighting. Grabbing doesn't stop at the top. It is most intense at the top. America being top plunderer means being top plunderee. The efforts of the whole world are directed at getting back the plunder from the plunderer. The plunderer must weary himself to death with protection procedures, must exhaust his treasury with security costs. And fall sometime, and usually fast. [Ceausescu, Marie Antoinette.] 9/11 was doubtless a product of gang warfare at the top. I am waiting for it to come out that a rival gang to the Bush gang worked in those buildings. <br><br>It has been noted at least since Roman times that overpay is like water that makes you thirsty. The greediest are the most overpaid. This is partly because they are most under attack, their expenses are enormous. And endless, till they fall. Overpay is like trying to build and maintain a dam on a lake. Damned expensive, damned inconvenient, and damned sure to break sooner or later. As the cost of the dam eats the fortune, maintenance suffers and the fall comes. Much easier to have justice, untheft, and no one bothering you. You cannot enjoy unless all enjoy. You can't waterski the lake unless the water is equal. <br><br>Our safety and freedom must be enormously compromised by overpowerful above us, and by underpaid below us. [Eg, illegal immigrants. Which the superoverpaid like, because it keeps down wages, ie, increases slavery and subjection of the workforce. Which is what Hitler was hired by the tyrants/industrialists for. But that subjection generates revolution and crime, as the underpaid try to get back theirs.] How safe the world would be for travel with every adult family member being paid what they earn, US$15 per hour of work!<br><br>RDR wrote: <br>Anyway, since you brought it up- what's your work history? How are you employed? How do you get your income? <br>As I've said, I have a limited amount of time to spend busting people's soap-bubble utopian schemes. But I can spare [a] little, now and then.<br>I reply:<br>How do I reply to that? I could say: mind your own business. But you would say I was concealing in order to ward off your attack on my credibility as a thinker. <br><br>I could repeat that such an attack would be a fallacious wrong argument, but that is not what you want to hear, so you have ignored it, have not been able to take in that point. <br><br>I could be a journalist like Henry George or Frederick Bastiat, who produced and clearly explained very good economic points. [A lot more clearly and impartially than most economists.] I could be a writer, like Shaw and Tolstoy, who said good economic things. I could be a Malthus, who said some obvious rubbish he later repudiated, which was taken up by the establishment to bolster its theft position. I could be an Adam Smith who said some very canny things and some foolish things. <br><br>The only important thing for you or anyone else is: has this person got some points of value to me? Should I read this person in case he has some answers? Is there anything here I can grab to improve my position? I may die at any time, but the truth will always be in your life, either knocking your shins or stroking your beard, depending on how well you see reality. Has this thinker cleaned any part of the window onto life and happiness?<br><br>I have been a meatpacker, a graduate librarian, an art education officer, a homekeeper, a delivery person, a student, a handyman, a builder, a teacher, a factory worker, a writer, but I am mostly a thinker, a student of life, a learner, a philosopher, a reader in the humanities. I have had the benefit of some very great teachers. I have always been focussed on making life better. I am happy to have found a way to make life very much better [so it has seemed to me for 15 years of re-examination of the idea], unhappy that there is so little communication.<br><br>I hope you will continue to find a little time to continue to try to bust my soapbubble utopian scheme. Test everything and hold on to what is good! Never believe merely out of respect for the teacher! <br> </span><!--EZCODE FONT END--></strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--></em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> <p></p><i></i>
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Can't We All....

Postby Floyd Smoots » Wed Feb 22, 2006 12:11 am

....Just go to WAL-MART (registered trademark), buy brand new shotguns, and settle this like "gentlemen" used to about a century-and-a-half ago???<br><br>Jus' askin', don'cha know???<!--EZCODE EMOTICON START >D --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/grin.gif ALT=" >D"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> <br>Threadwise, jus' really don' keer nomo!!!<br><br>HOT DANG, THOUGH, REALLY GOTTA LUV THAT-THERE WALLPAPER. NICE COLOR!!! WHAR KIN' AH HIRE THET-THAR DECKERATOR??? <!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :lol --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/laugh.gif ALT=":lol"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> <br> <p></p><i></i>
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