Are we slaves to money?

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My point is that your cute little picture is utterly irrelevant, as it is nothing more than an anecdote.

If the Ubuntu philosophy was actually worth anything, then why is there so much misery in Africa?

Nice! You just shifted the goalpost.


Then neoclassical economics is opinion, not science. Marginal utility, not price, is the foundational quantity in micro-economic theory. You can't measure it but it is nevertheless required to derive the individual demand curve. Without well-defined supply and demand curves "dead weight loss" ceases to be anything more than "opinion" (your word, not mine).

Also, if right-wing economists want to continue with their claims that their "science" is value free, they need to stop with the idiocy of pushing GDP growth as the end-all and be-all of "good" in the world. Just stop it already!

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Last edited by SpiritBlooms on 04 Dec 2012, 2:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.

There is much misery in the United States and other 'developed' countries. The difference is you have far greater peaks between privilege and adversity.

Africa has a complicated and turbulent history because of slavery, colonialism and internal tribalism. I severely doubt that ubuntu lists prominently in the checklist of reasons why its struggling now. If anything its because behaviours contrary to it have been in force.

I would also add that Slavery caused the dispersal of the 'great minds' that could have been instrumental in building a better Africa.
http://www.blackinventor.com/
http://www.black-inventor.com/

The origin of the Hutu-Tutsi genocide is complicated. Rwanda was never really egalitarian as the Tutsi traditionally had the political control of the old kingdom long before the Europeans showed up. The imported European ideology of racial nationalism is what lead to the genocide, the concept that there can only be one legitimate genetic race tied to specific geographic "homeland". Thus rather than looking to share political power in rational way, the Hutu nationalists decided the Tutsi had to be purged from the land.

Umm, can you elaborate? I am assuming that you somehow think that the concept of aggregate demand is a crucial component in neoclassical economics. I disagree. The core component of neoclassical economics is microeconomics. Aggregate demand is a more Keynesian concept, and the underlying mechanisms are in no way as well described as the core concepts of microeconomics.



Marginal utility (or more precisely, the marginal rate of substitution) is a predictive assumption used to construct indifference curves when studying consumer behavior. This (in combination with the remaining rational choice assumptions about economic behaviour) yields falsifiable hypothesises that can be investigated using the scientific method. Thus, it is not opinion.

And you confuse the concept of aggregate supply and demand curves with specific supply and demand curves. In actual markets, the price elasticity (the slope of the curve) of demand and supply can be measured by examining the actual responses from shifts in price and quantity of the particular good. The problem with aggregate demand is that no single good can be identified. But as mentioned above, economics is more than just the AD-AS model.



It is quite easy to present economics in a scientific matter. "Efficiency" is neither objectively good or bad. I am aware that a lot of people (including myself) consider efficiency to be "good", but I suspect that is because it frees up resources to be used for other purposes deemed "good".

Conversely, Hitler probably would probably acknowledge the efficiency of Usain Bolt at 100 metre sprinting, but I doubt he would like him for it.

And the interesting thing is that GDP is positively correlated will a lot of estimates of things deemed "good" by many people, like life expectancy, nutrition levels, literacy, education, low infant/mother mortality, and democracy (although GDP explains democracy, not the other way around).

So when people say that they want to achieve these goals, it would be quite inconsistent to simultaneously point fingers at those who provide real and effective means of reaching these goals... through free market economies.

Do you want me to compare the "so-called" misery of citizens in the developed world with the "actual" misery of the citizens on the African continent?



Which proves my point. Ubuntu philosophy isn't worth anything.



Irrelevant. And no proof.

May I recommend that you read -Leviathan- by Hobbes.

He points out that in the absence of law and order, people who would really like to be good and gentle often have to resort to pre-emptive attack to avoid being killed by those who are neither good nor gentle. In a system where there is enforced law, those who would be good can be good because they know they will be guarded against aggression.

Our internal goodness can manifest itself, only when it is safe to do so.

ruveyn

I think you are distorting thomas81's claim. He didn't claim that society can't be free unless everyone is allowed to do whatever the hell they want, including sitting in the basement playing video games all their life. That's your apparent interpretation. All he did was attack ruveyn's insistence that "you are still free to not work and starve" dismantles the concept of indirect coercion.

It's also helpful to acknowledge that the statement you so strongly objected to was a response to ruveyn's typical hard-core attack on positive liberty. Thomas81 could have tried to make his statement in a more nuanced way but what can you expect when the person he's addressing is ruveyn? Ruveyn's typical semi-flame-baiting style doesn't exactly inspire a patient or thoughtful response.


What the hell have I lied about?

I beg your pardon sir! I am the very model of logic and reason. Just because I insist on calling things by their Right Names and not wrapping my conclusions in soft furry paper is not a warrant to saying that I flame bait. My view are defensible by both fact and logic.

You are annoyed that I do not share one of your major premises, to wit, that we have positive obligations to others in a general or a priori way. I dissent. The only a priori duties we have to others is not to abuse their lives, persons or properties. My axiom is do as thou wilt, if it be not harmful or wrong. I suspect you do not approve of hard core libertarians.

The only people we are duty bound to help, nurture and protect are the children we bring into the world and then only before they are able to do for themselves.

ruveyn

You are a very confused person. You mistake your opinions for facts.

Some distortion of the interpretation occurred, and I was not aware of this until now. The context of ruveyn's comment was actually lost, resulting in thomas81's comment to be interpreted in a more extreme manner, which can be noted by the nature of my response and in all following responses.(Where I end up agreeing with you, but not agreeing with the interpretation of thomas81's comment)

It doesn't help that I probably lumped in thomas81 with people like the Venus project who actually DO argue for abolishing work. So, that's probably the source of conflict.


I don't tend to engage ruveyn very often for that reason, and often I ignore him, regardless of what he says. I don't think ruveyn explains the level of thoughtfulness too much either.

I usually will put in some effort in most things I say to make sure my response is thoughtful and nuanced though. It does annoy people occasionally.


Everything. Marshall, this last response of yours is the only one that shows any signs of being productive and sensible.

To be fair, I apologize for my misinterpretation and failure to recognize that I had made a misinterpretation. I'm upset/annoyed because it took too long to determine the source of the error. If you become aware of anything that can resolve problems like this quicker, then please keep that in mind. Note: I think your willingness to attribute motivational problems too quickly to the cause of arguments may have slowed down the process. I will also admit that while my arguments based upon the misinterpretation were correct, the misinterpretation itself was not correct.

Urgghh.

"I don't really understand where the hell you're coming from to proclaim that I'm the stubborn one when ..."

Simple, really. It became readily apparent that this "conversation" had degenerated into talking past one another, misinterpretation, cross-accusations of "quibbling", and motivation questioning a long time ago. Marshall probably "started it" (to use the parlance of elementary school kids) with an emotionally/morally charged and uncharitable or misinterpretation-based analysis of one of your statements (though I'm not going to solidly stand by that, given that I'm not going to read several pages of back & forth to get the exact context).

Marshall should probably end the conversation too, so I'm not going to absolve anyone from fault. Though it's somewhat clear that you continued writing angry posts after Marshall decided to tone back his more polemical jabs a bit, but Marshall later reasserted his polemical style so maybe he's "more at fault". I don't f*cking care.

You should care.


....

Okay. He might actually argue for things like abolishing work but I didn't really interpret his back-and-forth with ruveyn in that context. In any case it's pretty pointless for either of us to keep arguing when the root of the disagreement is over semantics and definitional framing of an issue rather than anything of real intellectual substance. Arguing over a preferred definition of freedom is as pointless as arguing over a preferred definition of theft. It's all linguistic framing which doesn't necessarily have any bearing on reality.


It's funny because ruveyn is thoughtful when discussing non-political topics but when he goes on PPR he mostly just comes to repeatedly bludgeon people over the head with his opinions.


Sorry for being an ass earlier in the thread. I was in a bad mood at the time and some of your responses to the far lefties here reminded me of the way another poster I had a bit of a personality clash with frequently talked down his nose at lefties without really backing up his criticisms with anything more than intellectual arrogance. I now realize it probably wasn't your intent to sound that way and thomas81 is one of the more extreme lefties on here that I don't always agree with so perhaps his rhetoric is as irritating to you as the rhetoric of the more extreme libertarians is to me. I'll admit to some bias there as I tend to be more sympathetic to complaints of the far left even if I don't necessarily agree with all their ideas or their proposed "solutions" to the world's ills.

Am I? There are laws requiring parents/guardians to care for a support their young charges.

There are no laws (in the U.S.) requiring us to dive in a save drowning persons.

Two facts which support my assertion.

We have no legal duty to help needy persons. We can ignore the starving and the injured. There are no laws in the U.S. punishing "depraved indifference".

I am aware of the social protocols that would socially censure people who are indifferent to the needy in an emergency. But such social protocols do not constitute legal duties, the kind that can be enforced with guns, chains and dungeons.

ruveyn