Koroviev
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Posts posted by Koroviev
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ego-utilitarianism and "self" interest does not make ALL murder moral. only when murder MAXIMIZES "self" existence. This is a rare occurence since murder carries a very high cost. being offered millions of dollars to murder someone is not necessarily beneficial enough to exceed costs. you can universalize "self" existence. you cannot universalize NAP. UPB makes a fallacious attempt at doing so. i suggest you read the thread i started on this.
So, you agree then that self interest makes murder moral (at least in some circumstances) which would mean anyone who decided not to murder in those circumstances immoral. Also who decides what is in someones best self interest? If I get murdered by someone then am I being immoral? I can't imagine being murdered would ever be in someone's best interest. Couldn't I justify pretty much anything by saying it is in my best self interest? Who's to dispute that?
a principle is the foundation of a person's actions. it is a primary objective, or absolute rule to follow with no exceptions. if there is an exception to the principle it is not a principle. Stefan's philosophy is not logically rigorous. it contains numerous misuse of logic and mathematical proof. the fact that he hasnt set rigorous definition shows his lack of experience in using rigorous logic. i dont believe in rights. stefan claims the same but seems to rely on them, at least according to you. rights do not exist, and if they do they have no relevance. if youre talking about what is "right" and "wrong" you must establish an objective in order to classify an action as either or.
I still don't see how the non-initiation of force is not a principal. It does not say you can never use force, it does not say you are evil if you ever use force. It simply says it is immoral to initiate the use of force against another person (Murder simply for money is always immoral).
To be honest, I'm a little lost on what you mean by a "rigorous definition" but maybe that will make more sense when I read your other arguments, but isn't the "objective" based on the individual, i.e. if you want to be moral you'll do x, if not you won't, I don't think philosophy has anything to do with telling people what they must do.
Send me a link I'd love to read your arguments as to the fallacy of UPB.
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Doesn't ego-utilitarianism, or "self-interest" as you are proposing it just make murder moral? Especially in the life boat scenario you proposed isn't it in my self interest to murder someone if offered millions of dollars, which cannot be universalized because it would make the act of not murdering someone immoral.
Also, maybe I have the wrong definition but isn't a principle a basic truth, law, or assumption? i.e a general rule that can be universalized. Again "self-interest" cannot be universalized. As Stef points out in UPB it may be in my self interest to steal something from someone (stealing is moral) therefor whenever I do not steal something I am being immoral (not stealing is immoral). As opposed to the N.A.P. which says "each person has the right to make his or her own choices in life so long as they do not involve aggression, defined as the initiation of force against others." In other words, initiating force against others is immoral and not initiating force against others is moral. The key point is initiation of force, not necessarily the use of force.
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Terribly sad story but thanks for the great info guys.
If anyone's interested I just heard similar info here: https://www.noagendaplayer.com/listen/732/1-36-04 A lot of it is similar to what is touched on above, but they also look a bit more into the website itself, the manifesto, the drug he was on, and the senator who was killed. If nothing else it's nice supporting research to what Stefan and the guys have found.
Cheers
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You're right this has gone on long enough.
Up to this point I've given you the benefit of the doubt assuming I wasn't very clear in my explanations, but you continue to take the things I say out of context. I made generalizations backed up by evidence and you called me bigoted while arguing that all rich people are evil, all religious people are stupid, all poor people are helpless, and the only way to save the poor is through a system that is unsustainable and inevitably leads to communism. You've had no evidence to support your facts and have degraded this posting to personal attacks.
It really was an enjoyable conversation however, and I hope you gained as much out of it as I know I did.
If I can give you one piece of advice for your own health and sanity it would be to stop watching the biased media, they truly are trying to brainwash you into their thinking, i.e. what is best for them. Read some books, do some research, there happens to be some really great resources right on this site!
Cheers, and I really do wish you the best of luck.
- TYFYC
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I'm going to try to hit all of your points and still keep this as short as possible. Let me know if I miss anything.
>> If they are selling all they are producing that must mean the demand for that is high and the supply is low therefore they need to make more.
Car manufacturers produce 30% more cars than can be sold, any increase in production can be sold only through pushing another manufacturer out of competition.
Roughly 30% of all food produced in the western world is thrown away, there is virtually no shortage of anything, no need to produce more of anything.
- Don't car manufacturers produce more than they sell because the people who buy their cars want choices and it's impossible to predict what those people will want to buy. It seems to me the only ways to fix this would be to take away everyone's choice or only make cars to order. Also, not sure where the 30% is coming from?
A lower entry point means workers earn less, subsequent they buy less, subsequent less products can be sold, subsequent less workers are needed.
- Lower entry point means more people can work it has nothing to do with how much they earn.
>> If they are not selling everything .... they need to expand to other areas or go out of business.
Expanding to other areas means nothing else but pushing others out of business in some other area.
- it's not a zero-sum game, different people want/need different things. Expansion does not automatically mean someone else goes out of business.
Whether one company goes out of business or another, from a global point of view it makes no difference, fact is we have too much production, which causes ever harder competition where everybody loses in the end.
- Competition does not mean everyone loses! Just because someone can do something better or cheaper than me does not mean I can't do anything.
Trying to make more jobs to let even more companies produce even more only makes the problem worse.
- Isn't your argument
Unless a company comes up with an entirely new branch of products, there are no jobs created, just one worker in one company replaced by a lower paid worker in another company.
- people still want choices
Of course my farmer friend would love to hire a bunch of workers and farm all his land, but doing that is not a question of wages, it's a question of finding demand for products on the market.
Wages for unskilled labor in Italy are in fact by now low enough and prices in supermarkets are in fact high enough, he could afford hiring workers for his fields and arrive at the market with lower prices than supermarkets, but there's a gigantic over supply of food, meaning if he would hire and offer his products cheaper, supermarkets would lower the price until he is out of business again.
This predictable situation compared to the fact he managed to make a living on his own now let's him stay away from hiring.
- still not sure how this helps your point? wouldn't forcing him to pay more employees make his situation worse? How does limiting the amount of time he can work change the fact that there is no demand for his product?
We've had that in the past, selling prices below cost of production, that's how supermarkets pushed small companies out of business, that's why in capitalism exclusively the biggest companies win the competition, simply because they have the money to survive 10 years or more without profit.
- I'm not sure what it's like in Italy but I'm not sure of any situation where the biggest companies exclusively win? I know lots of small companies that do just fine despite having huge companies as competitors. Also, if it's solely dependent on who can sell things cheaper why are there other stores besides WalMart? I think it's communism where the big companies exclusively win because everything is owned by the state. see George Reisman.
In Germany they have a law and they enforce it, saying you cannot sell something below the cost of production, that's why in Germany farmers do much better than in Italy and prices of products in Germany are far cheaper than in Italy because supermarkets have the continuous competition of farmers they aren't allowed to push out of business by plain money power.
- Although, I don't think more government regulations is ever a good thing, I feel like this would be a better solution than a cap on working hours. If it works so well why isn't this your proposal?
>> the opportunity for more working hours ...... to make more money
There is no such thing.
A single company might become more competitive, might be able to hire more workers, but while the total demand for products doesn't increase simply because the population as a whole doesn't consume more, any hiring in one company is always causing other people to lose their jobs.
- again I think this is arguing against your own point. This is absolutely true, but only if everyone else already has a job. i.e. if 100% of people are already working their federally enforced limit who is there left to hire?
That's again the title of this topic, any company can grow, but not all of them.
- again I agree but this does not mean that ONLY one company can grow.
It's what the Germans and the Chinese do, they create a gigantic export surplus which does nothing else but export their unemployment.
The idea especially the European Union came up with now, requesting that all countries now have to become more competitive to follow the German example is absolutely absurd, even the dumbest kid in first grade can tell that not all countries on earth can have an export surplus, if someone exports, someone else has to import, the surplus of one country is the deficit of another.
- yes not all countries can export the same goods, but not all countries have the same goods to export. So yes if everyone is doing the exact same thing, everyone ONLY wants that one thing and one person does more of that one thing then everyone else loses. However, this is not the case...at all. It is because other companies have a deficit of German export goods that Germany can export those goods. No one is equal that is why there is and always will be competition.
Under all circumstances lower wages equals less money going around in the population, leading to less products sold and/or lower prices, leading to deflation and depression.
- All circumstances? Where does the money go if it's not in the population? What if a company lowers dividends paid (a wage for some people) in order to reinvest in that company creating more jobs and more wealth overall?
>> what happens when people work more even upon 100% tax?
Easy.
For a single month or in case of emergency, no problem, but if a company forces their workers frequently to work more than the cap, on top of the 100% income tax for the worker, the company will have to pay an additional tax equal to the wages they would have had to pay for the extra worker they didn't hire, and if that still doesn't make them obey the law this will be doubled as often as necessary, until they do.
- so if a company "forces" someone to work (not sure how this is possible unless the state is involved) the employee not only has to put all the money they "made" from being forced to work into taxes, the company also has to pay another salary in taxes?? But if everyone who is able to work already has a job how are they supposed to find someone else to work? Also, are you saying after an emergency happens you'd have to get permission to save up for the emergency? or can you get permission to work more to save up in case an emergency happens in the future? if so wouldn't everyone just continue to work more to save up for emergency...like they do now...
There is no possible punishment for companies other than charging fines that exceed the advantages they have from abusive behavior.
I for one wouldn't have charged Citygroup 7 billion for their fraud, I would have charged them 7 trillion, I would have closed their business, confiscated all their property including the private property of all their managers, to reimburse the people they cheated.
wouldn't it be more effective to just not bail them out (pay them) and let them fail as opposed to bailing them out then asking for some money back?
>> Surgery that requires more than 10 hours ... custom coding jobs ....
If someone works 40 hours in one week and then doesn't work for the rest of the month, where is the problem?
You could work 480 hours in one month and then take the rest of the year off, still no problem.
You could keep the working hours at 40 hours a week and reduce retirement age to 40 years, still no problem.
Below a given level of hours it's way more efficient to let everyone work several days or weeks in a row followed by a long vacation, than everybody working just a few minutes a day.
As far as I know they are currently doing something similar on offshore oil drilling platforms, 6 months of work, followed by 6 months off.
All it takes is switching from a few specialists drowned in work plus a bunch of unemployed to enough trained personal.
- so what you're proposing is central planning? see...well...communism, read Ayn Rand, George Reisman.
It just can't happen that some job can only be done only by one specific individual.
If that one has an accident and dies while there's a demand for his job, what will you do?
- as stated above this is arguing against your own point. if 100% of the working population is already working who's left to replace anyone? Especially if the "replacement" worker and the company itself will suffer massive penalties.
Someone else has to take over, so it makes way more sense to train enough people instead of insisting on a specific individual for the reason that there are no other qualified people.
- how are you going to predict how many you need? are you going to make certain people learn certain skills? Central planning, communism, Ayn Rand, George Reisman, Nazi Germany, etc.
>> college graduates .... have a higher intelligence ...
That's as close to racism as you can get, you're only not separating by race, but by wealth of parents, that's birthright, otherwise known as feudalism.
- I think you mean bigotry, but the statement I made is neither. First off it is a generalization (which I though I'd made clear) I'm pretty sure the idea that only the wealthy can or do go to college is more bigoted that the generalization I made that is backed up by research. See Dr. Kevin Beaver for more on IQ studies.
Do you honestly believe children of rich parents are in general more intelligent than children of poor people, or how else do you want to justify the fact that in 2013 a total 77% of children from top income families earned at least a bachelor's degree by the age of 24, while only 9% from the low income bracket did the same?
- so if we put them into college they will instantly become smarter and be able to make better decisions than their parents? how is it fair to "poor kids" most of which come from bad backgrounds to be held to the same standard in school as those from households with well educated parents? are the "poor kids" going to be able to perform as well if they don't have time to study because they have to work? It isn't fair to begin with creating more rules does not make it fair. Now, I am in no way saying that "poor kids" cannot go to college or do well in school, in fact the "poor kids" who do make it are generally much better off than the "rich kids" who get everything handed to them.
There a literally billions of people in Asia (lots of communism) and Africa (Massive aid and welfare) never given the slightest chance to get anywhere, often dying before the age of 6 due to lack of medical care.
I bet you anything you like, in the last 50 years there have been several dozen children smarter than Einstein who died because nobody cared about their intelligence, because rich people find it more important that their plain dumb offspring gets a degree from Yale.
- Also how would not being able to work more hours to save up for college make this problem any better?
Of course studying isn't limited by hours, because someone studying doesn't take away the opportunity to work from someone else, just the opposite, the more people study, the more jobs there are for teachers.
1. how many people want to be teachers? 2. the teachers' hours are capped as well so you'd have to have a bunch of teachers all taking turns teaching the same thing then another group of teachers grading their work, then another group of teachers coming up with lesson plans for those other teachers to teach, etc. etc. 3. How is it fair that Students have to go to school for more than the allotted number of hours per week, and work for the allotted number of hours per week and magically make more money than it takes for them to live off of (so they can pay for school) when even their teachers only have to do a couple hours of work per day.
>> Are companies expected to have dedicated trainers?
If a company has specific requirements, where schools and universities can't provide the necessary training, of course a company wanting a specific job done will have to train workers for that and since trainers would do only 10 hours a week, of course they have to train more people and need more trainers.
But training isn't working, meaning training of workers within companies isn't limited, as long as you don't define burger flipping a training that requires 3 years of learning, companies could hire people, have them work their 10 hours, pay them and use the rest of the week to train them further.
- so does this mean trainers don't get paid? or that trainers also have to work outside of the time they are training? How is this fair to anyone?
You might say all the training may result in 40 hours for everyone again, but that's no problem, as long as training isn't abused to hide additional production, the workers needed in production still equal full employment.
While ALL companies have to do that, where is the problem? If costs increase for all companies to pay more trainers, competition is the same either way.
For the population as a whole there is no difference between paying higher prices for the products and paying food stamps for the unemployed.
I know, companies like the Koch brothers want to terminate all social programs and let poor people depend on charity, but whether it's done through charity or public financed food stamps, the total cost remains the same, unless you want to let poor people die.
- yes we've all heard the Koch brothers are entirely evil. But aren't they just playing within the rules of the system? how would changing the rules not allow them to "take advantage" of those rules?
>> ... wouldn't companies having to hire more people than they can afford cause infinite inflation?
I believe you might not be aware what causes inflation.
I'm aware the Austrian school teaches inflation is generated by money supply, but if that were true the near infinite money printing of the FED in recent years would have caused a gigantic inflation already, even worse in Japan, where they have printed money like crazy for over 20 years by now.
But there is no inflation, not in the US and in Japan they have had deflation throughout these 20 years, simply because the money supply doesn't have any kind of influence on inflation.
Yes, I know, there's inflation in investment objects, such as houses, but that's an artificial bubble created by rich people who don't know what else to do with their money while there is no profit to make in every day products.
Giving credit to workers, which is what banks around the world have done in the last 50 years or so is equal to a temporary increase in wages, but that backfires big time, as soon as workers reach the limit of their credit, because then they fall back on their initial low income and have to pay interest out of that instead of buying products.
- again not sure where you're getting your stats but both Japan and the US have had inflation (Japan still does albeit small) up until this year. Do you mean the inflation has gotten smaller?
In general inflation is the increase in wages minus the increase of productivity.
- I definitely don't claim to know anything about inflation but isn't it the increases in prices of goods and services over time?
If companies manage to produce 5% more, without any other factor in the game, this obviously means, prices have to decrease by 5% or else the extra 5% of the products can't be sold, that's deflation.
If companies manage to produce the same with 5% less workers or if wages are cut by 5%, that's even worse, because in this case not only do you get 5% deflation, but instead of not being able to increase production, companies have to decrease production, meaning you get depression on top of deflation.
If net wages increase by less or less workers are hired than productivity increases, the system remains in deflation, regardless how much money is printed.
If an increase in wages isn't a net increase because taxes are raised, or if taxes are raised upon steady wages, that's the same as lowering wages, it leads directly into deflation.
If upon 5% increase in productivity net wages increase by 5% or 5% more workers are hired, inflation remains precisely at zero.
Only if wages increase more than productivity, the difference will result in inflation.
Why would hiring more workers force companies to increase prices, besides a small increase for the costs of extra trainers?
- because it costs money to hire people. it costs less money to pay 1 person $38 an hour than it does to pay 10 people $38 an hour
Upon full employment all the money currently spent for social services such as food stamps plus all the expenses from criminal activities arising from poverty wouldn't exist, all taxes could be reduced big time, the police force could be reduced big time, all people could make a living out of less money and for companies it makes no difference at all, whether they save on wages or save on taxes and people could easily afford increased prices from their saved taxes.
- not true, not true, and not true. there would just be more people being criminalized because they work too much. I see how a 100% income tax for working more than 10 hours is a decrease in taxes
>> Italy and the free market
Well, I can tell you Italy is one of the best examples for free market, only beaten by Greece.
- Although I am suspicious of this statement I don't know enough to argue hopefully someone else can jump in here. but I find it hard to believe the problems they have are stemming from being free markets.
The tax laws in Italy have been way beyond affordable for decades, a corrupt government is working into their own pockets and whoever can find a way for it, will circumvent paying any taxes.
As a result of that we do already have some kind of free market, not because it's a good system, but because our government has weakened itself through state debt so much that they just don't have the resources to control anything anymore.
I live in the north where things are still halfway ok, but there are entire regions in southern Italy where organized crime rules, where the police force has become part of the organization, where anyone trying to do anything against the entirely lawless evolution of crime gets shot in broad daylight.
Poverty in these regions is unimaginable, because the rich squeeze the very last cent out of the poorest, the formerly flourishing tourism has entirely collapsed because nobody dares going there anymore and nobody can sell anything because literally nobody has any money. (Italy has no social security like Germany has).
The currency of those regions are cigarettes and drugs, smuggled from eastern countries and over the Mediterranean and the only "jobs" available in these regions is the illegal sale of smuggled cigarettes and drugs.
There are entire towns where there is not one single shop, not one single registered business, not a single bar, plain nothing, because dealing cigarettes and drugs has become the most profitable business and outcompeted any other form of business by so much that nobody even considers doing anything else.
Food is exclusively sold in street markets, where anyone who would dare to ask for taxes would get shot right away.
You will say that's the result of too many laws, too much state and I agree with you, that's the fault of the state, increasing taxes above a given limit, feeding the rich as much as possible and suppressing the poor as much as possible until the people find their way around it.
But I believe this lawless state of organized crime is what you would also get if you eliminate too many laws and since I have seen the situation in southern Italy first hand I'd rather have something else.
I very much believe a modest but strong state caring for the people rather than for the rich is the only solution, because in a lawless environment people can be as diligent and as honest as they want, they will always be outcompeted by a few criminals.
Of course those Chinese would move on to other criminal activities, but if that wasn't even considered criminal or if a stateless society didn't have the means to stop them, who is going to prevent them from taking over society in whichever way they want?
If I'm not mistaken, the whole idea of government at least in the US originates from the situation in the wild west, where at first people paid someone to be the Sheriff, then someone to write the laws the Sheriff should enforce, and so on and so on, simply because without laws the stateless society was ruled by outlaws.
- not sure where this data comes from? There was much more crime in the east coast cities than in the "wild west"
Maybe you could see it like this:
The world right now is already producing more than all the people need.
If we would spread out the amount of work over all the unemployed and switch competition from the battle of having a job at all or be unemployed to competing for how much you earn through your skills, everybody would work less, everybody would pay less in social services and/or charity, all prices would drop and we would all have a much better life, while competition for the better job would still make sure the diligent ones are better off than the lazy ones.
(Yes of course I mean only the ones in the work force, children, elderly and handicapped people would still have to be covered by social services.)
Right now we have the absurd situation where the richest people own way more wealth than they could ever use for anything and the only thing they use their money for is to increase their wealth further which leads to bubbles in prices of houses and the stock market.
- Who's buying the goods they need to increase their wealth? Most of it is not the other Rich people.
I mean the Koch brothers own over a dozen private properties worth 10s of millions each, they occupy huge amounts of land with their private properties just so they can live in there for a week or two per year.
Now let alone that being absurd already, that's a matter of a couple of 100 millions, so what could possibly the advantage for our society be, or what further advantage could the Koch brothers themselves get out of an increase of their wealth above the estimated 75 billion they currently own?
You believe in a free society and/or upon more wealth they would care for charity?
Ummm, nope, not really, they are actually doing the opposite already, they are killing people because they prefer to make more profit through dumping hazardous waste into the ground water and they use the profits they make there to buy themselves the politicians they need to let their behavior go unpunished.
Now from your point of view, is living in some place where the Koch brothers might open a factory one day from start the wrong choice and the fault of those people and if so, where would you advise people to move to?
Keep in mind, in a free society the Koch brothers might decide to drill for oil anywhere, even on the sea right outside of NY, and imagine how much you would like an oil spill in front of your door where the polluters deny any resposibility?
- didn't the koch brothers just give $1.2 billion to cancer research? and even more towards arts music and scholarships? I'm afraid the evil koch brothers aren't necessarily as evil as the biased media makes you believe. Also, in a free society someone other than the government would own the land the koch brothers are, supposedly, distroying so there would be real consequences to their actions, or they would own it and they would have to do a cost benefit analysis on destroying the land by dumping on it or using it to create more wealth.
Last remark, just because it's something I invented myself, or at least I haven't heard it from anywhere else yet:
It may still take a while, but I believe the world will discover the downsides of capitalism when Koch Industries is taken over by Walmart.
It's only a matter of time until the richest is big enough to destroy the 2nd richest and when that happens, when the Koch brothers discover, being the 2nd biggest is from a libertarian point of view still "the wrong choice", once the world is governed by one single family, that's when even the billionaires will get the point.
this is just nonsense and does not support your point at all. stop watching biased media you're being brainwashed into thinking all rich people are evil!
Just one more point I missed to answer (might appear before moderators approve my long answer).
If you believe a company cannot cover sick leave of a worker doing 10 hours a week, then you didn't understand the whole point.
Do you honestly believe it's easier to replace the one and only highly specialized surgeon in a hospital doing 60-80 hours a week, than to cover one of 8 surgeons doing 10 hours each?
everyone else is already working as much as they are allowed to in your system so there is literally no one left to work. And I for one want the single best surgeon doing my surgery not 10 mediocre surgeons all taking turns cutting me open.
Under full employment finding a worker depends on the wages a company is willing to pay, so it's reversed from today, not companies setting the value of a worker to as little as the poorest of the unemployed is willing to work for, but workers set the value and it will near automatically balance on a level where workers get paid as much as their work is worth for the employer, simply because the worker will request as much as he can, but the employer cannot pay more than the worker produces in value.
so for an employer to hire someone new they have to pay more than their competition, without raising prices, or producing more, all while everyone else already has a job?
And then, 10 hours a week is not a fixed value, such a system has to be flexible.
It could be an annual decision, newly set every year or so, depending on supply and demand of work.
If new branches of products are invented and more work is required, the hours per worker can be increased anytime, same as they can be further reduced if more production gets outsourced to the far east.
If a specific profession lacks workers, there could be an exception made for that profession for a couple of years, under the condition that instantly more people are trained in that profession and if you cannot find enough people willing to do the job, this profession has to get an increase in wages until enough workers are willing to learn the job.
If one profession has too many workers while another has not enough, wages have to be adjusted until both professions are covered.
Wait, so now it's not really a cap it's a generally accepted rule you can only work 10 hours? But there is a certain group of people who could decide whether or not you can work more? do you have to apply to work more? what criteria do they get to decide whether or not to grant these extra hours? who are these all knowing people who decide who gets to work or not? as eluded to above communism does not and cannot work (see Ayn Rand, Nazi Germany, George Reisman).
Also, what if I have a kid and my wife wants to be a stay at home mom? is she forced to work or is my employer going to be forced to give me a raise? or can I apply for permanent "overtime" to support another person in my family, actually 2 other people if my wife was previously working?
- Cheers
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Also, the great thing about a free society is as long as it's not being enforced through the use of force you're free to experiment with any type of society you want!
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Ah, thanks for restating the original point, I think it got lost in the details. I highly doubt Stefan would ever argue that everyone should, could, or would be employed, and I for one never would. Some people are purposefully unemployed (monks), some people cannot be employed (those with severe disabilities), some people don't want to be employed (retired people), and some people society doesn't want to have employed (children..kind of). However, I'm going to assume you only meant full employment for everyone not in those categories as including them would bring a whole other dimension to "unfairness." To this point I would argue that you wouldn't want 100% employment because what would you do if people got sick and/or died, there'd be no one to replace them. Meaning, if you're operating at full capacity you wouldn't be able to keep up with demand, and since everyone who can work already has a job it could be years before you have someone to replace them. So, yes, I completely agree with you that everyone would not be employed in a free society, but I'd also argue that for a democracy, a capitalist society, or any other society there is.
As to the example of my work I don't think I explained it very well. I didn't mean that we all work 80 hours per week. Although, we do generally work more than 40 hours a week, especially if you count travel, 70-80 wouldn't happen unless you count business trips as work since you're away from home only because of work but then business trips wouldn't be possible at all in your proposed system.
We do employ at least 1-2 interns a year who we train right out of college and they almost always get hired on. Unfortunately the job itself is a lot of work, and it takes a certain type of person to do. As fun as it may sound most people don't like lying to people all day and then writing reports when they aren't doing that, so many of them don't tend to stick around long. Also, it's not the case that we only hire people after other companies have paid for their training, in fact we only hire people looking for a career change (like most businesses). We just can't hire people unless they have certain skill sets, like every career, so I'm not sure this would effect whether we would be around in a free society or not. I do however agree with you that likely we would not be around in a free society, but mostly because our business is ensuring companies are meeting government regulations (which would not exist the way they do now). Although I suppose people will always want to know how safe their money and sensitive information is... Either way that does not change the point which is we would never be able to survive as a company if we had to double (or more) our wage expenses.
Although, yes lower barrier to entry does not necessarily create the need for more working hours it absolutely does create the opportunity for more working hours. This is the key point. Whether or not those jobs actually get filled depends entirely on the environment. As to why a company would hire additional workers while they don't need more production? This is simple, to make more money. If they are selling all they are producing that must mean the demand for that is high and the supply is low therefore they need to make more. If they are not selling everything they are producing that means the demand is low and they need to put more effort into figuring out why, expand to other areas, or face the impending doom of going out of business. Just ask your farmer friend if he'd like to hire more employees I can guarantee he'll say yes, at least until he can afford to work only as much as he'd like to work and still be able to live comfortably. Also, how would he survive if he had to split up all the money he makes between the number of people it takes to cover the time he currently spends working. He probably "works" at least 70-80 hours a week. In a nutshell, the more employees you can afford to hire the more opportunities you have to make money, need is relative.
Now, I hope this doesn't come off as "moving the goal post," but I still think there are issues surrounding the 3 main questions I had.
First, while 100% income tax would ensure most law abiding citizens ("rule-followers") would abide by the hours cap that still does not answer the tracking part of enforcement, or the what-happens-when-people-work-more-anyway part. Both of which were stated previously, although in not so few words. That also isn't very fair to the people who have no choice but to work more than the allotted time. Even if that system was perfectly implemented there would still be situations where certain places were under-staffed, for lack of a better word, or where it would be required for the same person to continue doing the same job for more than 10 hours. Specifically, I'm thinking long and intense surgeries, custom coding jobs where there is a very specific style, or skill set, or even teachers who don't have enough time in a day as it is. I'm sure there are hundreds of other examples as well.
Second, putting more people in college does not make them more intelligent. The reason (in general) college graduates make more money (in general) than people (in general) who are not college graduates, is because (in general) they already have the higher intelligence(in general)...generally. Also, I would not be surprised if that figure is decreasing now that more people are going to college for free (or getting in loads of debt), since it seems like a lot of people just assume that sending their kids to college automatically makes them smarter/more skilled/more marketable/more talented, etc. So, it's not that only a tiny amount of people are "allowed" to be professionals it's that there are only a tiny amount of people who can, or want to, be professionals, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's just nature. Also, would the 10 hour cap relate to students as well? If so that would increase the time it takes to get a degree, and how would you pay for the degree?
Now I'm assuming by educate you didn't necessarily mean college, but how are you supposed to get on the job training if you can only work 10 hours a week? Are all companies going to be expected to have dedicated trainers? That would double the wage expense for every new employee you hired, and you'd have to pay every unskilled employee (remember we're assuming they have no skills or education) at least cost of living plus full medical benefits, and probably extra so they have spending/emergency money as soon as they got hired since it is illegal for them to work any more than their allotted 10 hours (same for the person who trains them). Not to mention the, although iconic generally accepted as quazi-truth, 10,000 hours it takes to become a professional which would be more than 19 years of training! Yes, obviously a person wouldn't be "in training" for that long but I think the point still holds true, which is it would take too long and cost too much to get good at anything at 10 hours/week.
Third, the statement you made about entrepreneurs not able to reduce the hours they work because someone else will take all the business is not true. There are lots of businesses that do just fine and only work the hours they want. They simply compete in other ways. Putting more people/companies that do the same type of work would only create more unsustainable companies since all of the demand would shift to the "best" companies. I'd still want the best people to do the job but an hour cap would just increase the time it takes them to do it, leaving all other companies/people without work,but still having to employ more people than they can afford. Also, wouldn't this situation create unsustainable and infinite inflation since it would cost the companies more because they'd need more employees, so they'd be forced to raise their prices, meaning workers would need to be paid more, which would increase costs to the companies, etc., etc. You still have to pay people living expenses (average cost of living in the US is $20,194 per person, per year http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Cost_of_Living) even though they are only working about 520 hours per year (assuming 10 a week every week). That's $38.83 per hour, minimum, per person, for every person. That's about $75,000 per year with normal working hours, and that's with vacation time. So, no one would be able to get sick, need time off, need an emergency fund, or be able to do anything with all of the "leisure" time they have.
Finally, to your example I don't really think you could say that Italy is a free market society, or even that the market street you are talking about is really a free market, so I'm not sure it can be used as an example of how the free market would fail. Also, I would be very surprised if the Chinese workers were really the only reason, or even the main reason, the other stalls went out of business. And, if the Chinese were able to push the other businesses out because they did not pay taxes, which is if I'm not mistaken illegal, wouldn't they just do different "illegal" things to get around the system you propose?
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Apologies, for the delayed reply just returned home from a business trip (another issue with your proposal get to that later).
It seems to me that the free market would give more people jobs first off because there would be fewer requirements to get a job (I'm thinking all of the pointless certificates that don't really add anything to the profession but seem to be in place simply to make the government more money), employers would not be paying taxes so they would have more money to go toward wages (you could say this would just go into their pockets but wouldn't it be better to hire more people so you can make more profit for a longer period of time), and finally there would be little to no barriers for people to start their own businesses (employing themselves) and hiring more people. Also, wouldn't the removal of the welfare state force more people to become more marketable (hirable) since they wouldn't be receiving free living expenses from the state?
The fundamental things I think need to be answered to make this proposal viable are:
- it would have to be enforced so how would you enforce it?
- what about all of the professions that require more than the allotted time (surgeons, teachers, etc.)
- What about entrepreneurs or sole proprietorships almost all of whom work 60-70 hour workweeks to ensure the survival of their companies, and would fail if they had to hire even one more person, let alone five to six?
I can give you a real example of why this would never work. I work for a small information security company in the United States. We do things like security audits, pen tests, and training mostly for small banks and credit unions all over the US. It is a job that takes a very specific type of person and a lot of experience so it's very hard for us to find new employees. There are four of us full time auditors, two sales guys, and an intern. Just this last week I was at a job in a different state (~1,500 miles away). The way the work is split up is one person onsite (travel, hotel, and food expenses), one person offsite, and the intern cleaning up the rest of the grunt work. There is at the very least 40 hours of work for the onsite person (not counting travel time), 30-40 hours of work for the offsite person (full yearly salary), and maybe 10 hours for the intern (per job paid hourly and he usually has multiple jobs per week, as do the rest of us). If we hired eny more employees the company would begin to lose money, and if we got rid of some of our employees we would be unable to keep up with the work.
So if we're generous we can say 80 hours of work for a single job. By your proposed system this would mean we would need eight employees (each working 10 hours, again not counting travel time), which is double what we currently have, and four employees onsite (four times travel, hotel, and food), three employees offsite, and at least one intern per job. Not even getting into the chaos and space requirements this would bring about (some credit unions have set us up in a hallway next to a water fountain), we would either have to not make any profit and go out of business, i.e. lose all of our jobs, or raise our prices and lose most of our business (small businesses can only spend so much money). This doesn't even touch on the fact that usually we are all working on multiple clients at a time, travel time, administrative work, business meetings, or anything else that running a business requires. I can guarantee that this holds true for every single other business out there, and forced reduction of work hours would have major unsustainable consequences.
Sorry for the long-windedness, free-market is just a very important topic that if people don't understand can have (and already has had) very negative consequences for all of us.
-Cheers
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First off, if car companies reduce production by 30% that does not necessarily mean they are firing 30% of their workforce. It still takes just as many people to run the machines, but I see the point you are making.
Lower barrier to entry means employers can afford to hire more employees for higher wages since startup and day to day costs are cheaper. It also means the unemployed have more opportunities to start their own businesses and/or gain the skills they need to not be unemployed. Lastly, it places as much of the responsibility on each individual as possible therefor in all but rare circumstances if they do not have skills or a job it is entirely on them (most of those rare circumstances would be worked out through charity I'm sure).
In the business world everything is a give and take since everyone has choices. If an employer decides to lay off his entire workforce and only employ a single worker there are very real consequences for the employer (what if the one employee gets sick, burnt out, or realizes the entire business depends solely on him and decides to take advantage of that, not to mention the magical and immeasurable goodwill every business strives for), just as there are consequences for the employee if he decides he will only work for 5 times more than he is worth (no one will hire him), and the customer who is only willing to pay 1/5 of the asking price (no one will sell to him).
I'm not sure what population you are referring to that is competing to spend all of their wealth in leisure unless you mean retired people or those countries who have government required vacations (or maybe the super wealthy "playboys" who inherited all of their wealth?) but this is a very small percentage of the population and are not trying to work. Those who are actually running the businesses don't have time for leisure because they are running their businesses (hence why they get paid more).
Also, I think your supply/labor/demand equation is a bit off since in reality there are shortages of all three, but again I think I understand the point you're trying to make (i.e. in certain countries at this point in time there are more people needing jobs than being hired). However, all of these situations in all of these countries can be followed back to increased government regulations (or corrupt government practices). Take increased minimum wage for example, when minimum wages go up employers are forced to fire the less skilled, or liked, workers because they know they can still get by since the more skilled workers will pick up the slack. For an example of how the agriculture industry got to where it is I recommend reading Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" (yes the banks made it so people lost their land but they could only do that because the government allowed/enforced it not to mention most if not all of the government is run by those who greatly profit when the banks profit, etc., etc.).
Finally I agree with you that it will never be 100% fair to 100% of the people 100% of the time, however I do not see how the solution of limiting working hours could come even close to being "as fair" (whatever that might mean) as giving people as much choice, and therefore as much opportunity, as possible. Especially since you still have not answered any of the original (and I think the most fundamental) issues I brought up.
Once again life isn't fair and that's just nature. Increased government regulations will never make it fair but will only make it worse.
P.S. I hope you're getting as much enjoyment out of this delightful conversation as I am, it's been truly challenging and very enjoyable for me. Thanks!!!!
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No and no.
The only way a stateless society will come around (barring some major crisis) is if people are raised better, and therefore better able to think for themselves. This is the trap of the Liberal media making people believe "the poor" are sad and helpless and that the only way to save them is for the government to force people to give the government money so the government can decide how to "save" "the poor". This is prejudiced and takes all of the responsibility away from the poor and pushes it onto the "evil people" who they say are not helping the poor.
In a stateless society the barriers to entry will be as little as possible so more people will be able to hire more employees, and more entrepreneurs will be able to start their own businesses. Obviously things will still not be easy, but nothing worth doing ever is, and obviously there will still be "the poor" but they will have WAY more opportunities to not be "the poor" than they ever have. If society cares about "the poor" then society will find a way to help "the poor." If society does not care about "the poor" and needs the government to forcefully redistribute wealth to help "the poor" than we aren't even living in a democracy but a dictatorship.
The question is what good is the welfare system doing for the poor?
(If I remember right Stef also did a show on the effects of the welfare state I just don't remember which it was)
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"if you have a problem with inequality take it up with Mother Nature" - Stef
https://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/44288-youtube-an-introduction-to-capitalism/
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Of course wages are freely negotiable under limited working hours, there's no limit to how much someone can earn.
The difference is only that everyone would get paid what he is worth, rather than the most skillful one getting paid as much as the most desperate unemployed one waiting outside the door is willing to work for.
Wages would become a matter of skill, productivity and qualification, but you wouldn't see graduate students working nightshift in security business or flipping burgers at McDonalds, you wouldn't see highly trained doctors taking the jobs at Walmart, only because hospitals prefer to hire less doctors and make each of them work longer hours.
How to control that is another question, for self employed people it may be quite difficult if not impossible, but it doesn't have to be perfect, same as today's system survives corruption and nepotism, it would be sufficient to organize a regular working time of 10 hours a week in the same way we now organize 40 hours a week.
You would only have to add a paragraph saying, you cannot have more than one job, you cannot run more than one company and you cannot run a company and be employed elsewhere at the same time.
If you start your own company and you cannot manage to make it successful within the working hours you're limited to, maybe you simply aren't qualified to run a business?
What's the difference between trying to replace lack of skill by more hours, as long as that just forces every other self employed one to do the same long hours?
You'll be outcompeted either way, only that without limited working hours everyone works longer and a lot of people don't work at all.
I still feel like a lot of the picture is being left out. First off in skilled jobs the most skillful employee will always get paid much more than "the most desperate unemployed" person waiting outside the door. This may not hold true in mindless or factory work, but it will always be the case in skilled positions. If I knock on the door of a hospital and say I will do all of their surgeries, no matter how little I am willing to work for the surgeon will always get the job. Now maybe this is an extreme situation so let's talk a little more along what I'm assuming you actually mean. Lets take 2 surgeons, both applying for the same position, one (Dave) has 30 years experience, worked in the same hospital for all 30 years never been accused of malpractice, and has as spotless a record as possible. The second (Jim) has 30 years of experience as well, but has been charged with malpractice many times has been fired from every hospital he's worked at and is in general not a very liked guy. As the hiring manager who are you going to want to hire? Who are you going to want to pay more? In real careers you are hired based on more than just how little you are willing to be paid.
Lets say this same situation occurs but since both Dave and Jim are not allowed to work more than 10 hours, the hospital can "afford" to hire both, I'm assuming management can only work 10 hours too but we'll get to this later, who is going to be assigned most of the work? As a patient who do you want to perform your surgery? If you ask me the answer to both is Dave, every time. Again we have an issue with fairness because Dave is doing all of the work and Jim is reaping all of the rewards. Yes, the hospital could pay Dave more and Jim less but then wouldn't it be more fair to the owners of the hospital to not hire Jim at all? So by making it "more fair" to the workers you've in a sense made it less fair for the employers. The beautiful thing about a free market is that if my employer does decide to hire all of the unemployed and pay them nothing, then as a skilled worker I have the choice to go to the next employer and get paid more, or start my own company doing the exact same thing but pay more and get all of the most talented employees.
Not to mention, as an employer how am I supposed to judge my staff if they're only there for 2 hours a day? As an employee how am I supposed to gain more skills if I'm only there 2 hours a day?
Also, this still doesn't answer the 2 main questions of how will this be enforced if at all and what about jobs where people need to work longer than 10 hours? Wouldn't this cause teachers to stop teaching right when they hit their weekly 10 hours since I'm assuming they would stop getting paid at 10 hours? What constitutes working? When are teachers supposed to grade papers? What if a surgeon is in the middle of a surgery? or a firefighter? This system would have to be enforced somehow, otherwise why wouldn't I work more, or hire someone willing to work more, in order to make more money?
If your salary is based on "skill, productivity, and qualification" isn't there still a "winner and a loser" since those less qualified would get paid less? Also what incentive do I have to be more qualified if I'm guaranteed a job?
Finally, and I'm sorry that this may come off as a little rude but if you think anyone could start or even run any business on no more than 10 hours a week, then you must have no experience running or starting a business yourself.
Read Atlas Shrugged and you'll see the effects of this theoretical policy (I'll happily give you my copy if you PM me
) There are 3 possible ways out of this:
1) Let the starving people die (after which you will find yourself in a situation, where 75 more people are starving and only 75 people do all the work).
2) Tax companies and working people by 1/2 of their income and give it to the starving people for free.
3) Restrict the working hours, so companies are forced to rehire the starving ones.
If I read you right, you'd prefer to let them die?
I would prefer to rehire them, even though I still agree different skills and different productivity should make a difference in earnings.
Not to steal GasCap's thunder but I'm pretty sure the preference would be for the "starving people" to take initiative to gain the skills to make more money themselves. Everyone is responsible for their own choices and the consequences that come from them. 50% of the world is not starving. The WFP says about 11% (http://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats) and since they are in business to make things look as bad as possible you can almost be certain this is higher than the reality. And the 4th "way out of this" would be to bring down all of the barriers to entry which would give the "starving people" as much of an opportunity as possible leaving all of the responsibility on them, as it should be.
I don't even want to get into everything wrong with the rest of your argument, but to begin if there's only $900 in circulation and all of that is going to wages how are the companies in business?
- Cheers!!
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If I'm understanding correctly what you are proposing is that the way to fix the "unfair-ness" of competition is to limit the amount of time people are allowed to compete. Does this also include limiting the amount of wages people receive? Meaning a doctor would make exactly the same amount of money, and work the exact same amount of hours, as a 16 year old starting his first job flipping burgers at McDonalds. Is there another part of this plan I'm missing, because that seems far from fair to me.
Also, who is going to enforce this work curfew, for lack of a better term, and how is it going to be enforced? As a citizen am I going to be forced to wear a tracking device that buzzes after I hit exactly 40 hours? What happens if I continue working? Does the SWAT team show up and force me to stop the task I'm in the middle of? What if my 40 hours ends right when said SWAT team's 40 hours ends, who stops them from working and am I free to keep working until the next SWAT team arrives?
What if I'm, an entrepreneur starting my own business am I supposed to just sit around for the rest of the week once I hit my limit putting my brand new venture at risk? What about painters or coders or any other artistic workers who get into "the zone" and if were forced to stop would never complete their masterpieces? What about doctors in the middle of a surgery??
Also, what if I'm more technically or physically skilled that those who work the next shift, I'm assuming most jobs will need multiple shifts unless everything is just going to halt all at once when everyone hits 40 hours. Is it fair to me, my employer, or those who are benefiting from my skills if someone less skilled or knowledgeable is forced to finish the job I've started? What incentive do I have to do better work if it's not going to better my lot in life. Yes, the "Chinese" factory workers may be able to produce more goods cheaper but the artisan's goods will always be much higher quality.
Finally, who decides how much money is enough money or how much work is enough work? Are we supposed to put one all-knowing supreme being in place to make that decision for us (dictatorship), elect a group of officials to do it (democracy)? Do those individuals get to say how much they make? Who enforces that?
It seems to me like the only logical solution is to give people as much choice and freedom to make those choices as possible. Although, yes there still will be "the poor" at least then we can say for certain that they are only "the poor" because of the decisions they have made.
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It's not your fault, dude. She's a morally free women with her own moral agency making a choice. I mentioned in another thread that women have very simple classification systems for men, and two of those categories are Man That I'm Sleeping With versus Man That I'm NOT Sleeping With. And no woman makes major life-altering decisions - particularly decisions about children - by following the advice of a Man She Isn't Sleeping With.
You're off-base only in your expectations. You see her as a friend; she sees you as a Man She Isn't Sleeping With.
You expect your friendship to have strong influence over her. I'm telling you that you have close-to-zero influence.
So, if you're entering this conversation expecting her to follow your advice, don't say anything because you'll beat yourself up when she doesn't follow your advice. But if you're entering this conversation not caring about whether she follows your advice, then speak up and let her make up her own mind.
Expect, also, your wife to find out about this. Then decide whether your wife is strong enough to handle the most vicious personal attacks that The Woman You're Trying To Influence could launch against you.
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Have you thought about convincing Your Wife of your argument, and then advising Your Wife to talk to her friend?
Ah, sorry, and I probably didn't make this clear enough, but my wife and I are collaborating on this, and have been the entire time. Whatever choice they make will have no effect on me since our friends will be the ones who have to live with those decisions (in this case for the rest of their lives). My wife understands and agrees with my argument, that households with two working parents are damaging for children, and damaging to your relationship with your children. Which stems from our shared opinion of "why even have children if you aren't going to be around to raise them." We both understand that 1. this is a very sensitive topic and could potentially strain or end our relationship with this other couple if we overstep our bounds, and 2. to avoid that it's best to avoid being confrontational about it so we are hoping to discreetly sway their opinion by presenting the best evidence we have as indirectly as possible.
My personal opinion, as "Man she isn't sleeping with" not only has close to zero influence over what they think or do, it probably as a negative influence on what they think or do. Meaning they would most likely do the opposite of whatever I personally suggested. My wife on the other hand has some influence, since they are close friends, which is why the original goal was get more evidence on the effect of households with 2 working parents for my wife to suggest her friend looking into since this other couple seems relatively rational and want to at least appear to be doing what is best for their future offspring. I (we) are still looking for more evidence both to share with this other couple, in hopes of helping them to see the potential mistake (if it even is a mistake) they are making, and for our own knowledge because there doesn't seem to be a lot of evidence (aside from what Stef has presented), which means we could potentially be completely wrong.
The problem, and I assume it's a very common problem, is that the people we care about are lead by popular culture and current trends to believe that something which is (potentially) damaging is what is best. This is where I was trying to get in my last post, and as I said it may be a topic for a different thread, but is it our (in general not my wife and myself specifically) responsibility as moral, rational, and educated people to help to nudge those we care about in the right direction? If so, to what extent? Should we (again "we" in general) be ready to overstep the bounds of what is acceptable if it means those we care about may make better life choices? A very simplistic example would be if your friend showed up wearing skinny jeans is it your responsibility to tell him he looks ridiculous wearing them? What if he or she is marrying someone you know just wants him/her for his/her money? What if he or she is spanking his/her kid? It seems to me like a lot of problems in the world could be completely avoided if we all had people who cared about us enough to not be afraid to tell us we're making a big mistake.
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Stef did an interesting rebuttal of an article that criticizes stay-at-home parenting:
In which he gives some statistics about the benefits. I found it a compelling listen, and hopefully it has something that may be helpful to you
Thanks hannabanna, I'd completely forgotten about this show, but it's exactly in line with what I'm looking for. Has anyone done research into attachment theory? I think this may be a good course to take with them. I'm going to look more into it but if anyone has knowledge on the subject or a good jumping off point it'd be much appreciated.
Thank you for asking. I had to think about it for several days.
I don't think I have overcome the trauma, and I often have frequent doubts about my ability to overcome it. Self-knowledge tells me that I was close (once or twice) to settling down with a decent woman and making babies, and I called off the relationship. It did not feel right to me. I also know that there were several women who had designs on snaring me with a fallopian tube. Those, in retrospect, did not feel right either and there were many good reasons to believe this. But suppose no woman will ever feel right to me because of this trauma?
As of now, the only surefire method I have to not repeat the mistakes of my parents is to not have children. It's not an ideal resolution, I realize (the inevitable result is likely dying alone), but until I burrow deeper into myself, I cannot, in good conscience, knock a woman up. Since my father is working on his second family, I am off the hook, so to speak, for furthering the family DNA, not that this is a responsibility that I think I owe to my parents. They will never be allowed to meet my hypothetical children.
I find your story very interesting, and extremely heart wrenching, no one should be subjected to that. Especially since it seems likely that such a small lifestyle change, or really change in thought process, may have changed your entire life. I'm curious though, and please do not answer if you don't want to, if I'm understanding correctly it sounds like there were some women in your life who you were thinking about settling down with and were not trying to trap you with their fallopian tubes, "Penis Fly Traps" as my wife likes to call them, yet you still called it off. Was this after conversations with them about what you were feeling? If not do you think having that conversation may have changed the outcome? Also, do you think if you had a support group who were comfortable enough to keep you in check, I guess that's the best way of putting it, the outcome may have been different? By "Keep you in check" what I mean is friends or family you could talk to about what you were going through who would be able to rationally tell you, with evidence, whether or not you're making a good decision.
Do you think the man is strong enough to stand up against his wife in this situation?
When you said, "They also plan on having children as this has also always been part of her plan (not necessarily his plan but that's another topic).", I got the impression that she's calling the shots, and he's just going along with what she wants. (In other words, the most common male/female marriage dynamic.)
So you're basically A Guy She Isn't Sleeping With trying to directly tell her that she's not allowed to have what she wants. Matthew M's argument is good, so it "should" work on a logical, rational person - but I don't think it'll work on another man's wife. That doesn't mean you shouldn't tell her what you feel, but I wouldn't go all-in with an attitude of utmost certainty.
At best, you slowly (meaning multiple conversations over a series of weeks) convince the man to stand up to her - but you didn't give me the impression that he's able or willing to stand up to his wife over this issue.
I didn't communicate clearly enough in my previous post. (1) I am *NOT* encouraging you to just walk away from this interaction, (even though I, personally would do so). (2) I *AM* warning you that you're unlikely to succeed so that you won't either blame the entire female gender for the actions of this woman or blame yourself for your inability to convince her to follow your advice.
It's tough to be emotionally detached from this situation, especially when children are involved. But you must be emotionally detached, because you have very little influence over what she (or any woman who isn't your wife) does.
MMX2010 Thanks for the input. First off no I don't think the guy would "stand up" to her. From what I understand he never really wanted kids and kind of got sucked into it because she really does want kids. So yes he's just following along with whatever she wants to do (Happy wife, happy life right?). I think it's more we're trying to help people we care about make the best decisions for themselves and their future offspring, not necessarily directly telling them what they can or cannot do. I agree that approach would get nowhere. I also, definitely agree that it probably won't get anywhere anyway but I still think I would regret not giving it my best effort. I feel like a lot of the issues these days stem from too many people just "walking away" and not helping each other make better decisions in their lives (please understand I mean absolutely no offence by this). Thanks for the clarification!!
That sort of leads to what I think may be an underlying topic, and maybe another thread, but as a friend it seems to me like it's your responsibility to help each other when you "go astray." Think skinny jeans or bad haircuts in the short term, but also relationships and life decisions (i.e. the situation I'm in) in the long run. How much is it really your "responsibility" to help those close to you? Is it better to potentially offend or hurt someone's feelings to try to keep them from making a potentially dumb choice or to keep your opinions to yourself and let them make their own choices? Do you think having a support group of friends could alleviate some of the issues we have due to our parents' poor choices? How much advise is too much? What if you, the advise giver, are wrong? Or am I completely off base?
Also, just to clarify, this is in no way me trying to get in the way of some other guy and his wife. I am happily married myself, and wouldn't trade her for the world. This is my wife's really close friend, they were each other's maids of honor, so I've become close with them as a couple over the past few years. I'm simply helping my wife find ways to help her friend make good decisions and I offered to post here on her behalf to get some more input.
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I haven't heard of it until now but you've pricked my curiosity.
I always recommend for new listeners to listen to 3 shows before they make a judgement call. Thats generally gives you time to get used to their rhythm and what their goal is there's also a couple shows where they deconstruct their show to kind of give everyone a history of the show etc. (shows 200.5, 200.6, or most recently 681 the christmas special).
I am one.
ITM and TYFYC!
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Hopefully someone else has research at their hands, but appealing to their innate sense of love and justice might do some good.
Tell them children are incredibly perceptive and digest all information accessible to them about their environment to understand how secure they are. Tell them secure children are those who feel strongly attached, who do not have doubts about being loved, and who therefore are able to express their truest, most artistic and sophisticated thoughts and feelings without "blockage" or worry about the fact that they are vulnerable. Let them know that love is not just a saying, and that a child will not be convinced that they are loved merely by hearing the words stated to them over and over. Children want and need to exchange feelings and ideals with their parents, to exchange laughs, love, to offer their curiosity. Tell them that these interactions pave the way for the child to become open and honest, and that when they face difficulties later in life, they will come back to the parents for knowledge and perspective. Tell them the opposite of this - the opposite of a child who has the security to be honest and open - is a child who is timid, anxious, and prone to emotional repression and rebellion. If the child is with caregivers who are not the parents, they will not develop the trust to be open and honest with their parents, because they will perceive, quite astutely, that the parents do not see the value in their honesty and openness, and would rather substitute a stranger to look over them to actually avoid these honest exchanges of emotions and ideas.
Tell them this will lead to great suffering for the child, who wants desperately to have the security to be honest. Tell them the child, once grown, will act on the momentum of the past and internalize the notion that they must go elsewhere for their connection, and this will lead to peer-bonding and dysfunctional relationships, and the parent will be able to do little to influence otherwise, because they presented for years that they were not the people to go to for wisdom and honesty when they substituted a nanny for themselves in their child's most critical years.
Okay, those are just some ideas that I wrote free-flow. I hope they are at least mildly useful. I think provoking their conscience, their sense of morality and empathy might be effective, though. If you can make them feel guilty at the idea of leaving their child with a nanny for hours upon hours, maybe this will increase the costs for them, and even if they are selfish, it at least might point out the difficulties they will face if they do not bond with their children and thus appeal to their self interest in a productive way.
Matthew M. this is beautiful, thank you. It's definitely a huge help!
Steph has done the research and the shows. I can't remember the numbers but I'm sure you could find them. Maybe turn them on to those podcasts or videos. YouTube videos can be downloaded using free MP4 converters available online. Turn them on to FDR in general.
Thanks Merrifield, I'm working on getting them interested in FDR. Unfortunately he seems to be very afraid of change, even though he's a finance major (sorry couldn't hold back the bad pun) or anything that seems to go against the crowd. He listens to NPR almost religiously and the couple times I've mentioned FDR or any other show that questions what is accepted I get this look of terror.
She on the other hand seems to be a little more open minded, however it seems like sticking to her life plan (graduate, work, big house, work, baby, work some more) is at the top of her priority list. It feels like a hopeless cause, but my wife and I have agreed that we'd give it our best shot for the eventual baby's sake. We're working on turning them on to RTR and the Peaceful Parenting series, but just being very careful about how we go about it.
Again you guys have been a huge help and any other advise or research is much appreciated!!
-TYFYC
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Just curious if there are many No Agenda listeners and what people's thoughts are on No Agenda vs. FDR. Personally I've noticed both shows come to a lot of the same or similar conclusions about current events, and have found it interesting to see things from different angles.
- TYFYC
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Hmm, I read that as in general you can trade 1/100,000,000th of a bitcoin. Not necessarily that they are going to be used in the Nasdaq transactions, especially since the article from Nasdaq doesn't mention it. It's hard to say though since there doesn't seem to be much other info on it... :/
"How divisible are bitcoins?A bitcoin can be divided down to 8 decimal places. Therefore, 0.00000001 BTC is the smallest amount that can be handled in a transaction. If necessary, the protocol and related software can be modified to handle even smaller amounts." - https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ#How_divisible_are_bitcoins.3F
Thanks for the links though!!
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As far as I understand it this has nothing to do with Nasdaq using bitcoin as a currency, but simply using the blockchain architecture to speed up and increase the reliability and integrity of their current transactions. Also, out of my own curiosity what are your views on using bitcoin as money? I haven't heard many arguments against it.
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This was my own parents solution.
Some years before I was born, my parents moved into a three-bedroom house. No, they didn't sleep in separate rooms. They had planned on having two children, but the second child was never born. When I was seven, they moved into yet a larger house with four bedrooms, and filled the closets of the other rooms with old clothes.
When not in school, I spent my childhood up until age nine with a middle-aged female nanny in her home. She was disinterested in me or my desires other than feeding me and forcing me to take naps in the middle of the afternoon. I played outside in the yard, watched television, or played with toys, generally by myself. I had a distinct feeling of being a burden, or an unwanted problem.
Instead of buying a home much too large for them, it would pay them greater dividends with their children to expand as needed, perhaps keeping one parent at home, at least on a part time basis. Someone could be hired to help out part time that actually has enthusiasm for other people's children.
Perhaps when your friends' future children become adults, they will appreciate that they could grow up so close instead of feeling like an unwanted step-child.
Wow, thanks for sharing your story, and I'm really sorry you had to go through all of that. It's definitely something no one deserves to live through, and exactly the situation I hope to help them avoid. If you don't mind me asking, is there something in particular you think helped you overcome that trauma, and/or made you realize you didn't want to repeat their mistakes?
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It actually sounds a lot like what I was describing here: https://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/44014-is-the-movement-towards-global-peaceful-parenting-the-toughest-battle-to-win/ But I guess I was describing more so the challenge with helping the close minded learn, due to us being a social species. I was describing that to challenge one's current reality can, and a lot of the times will, break up relationships one has, which is detrimental to one's survival as a social being.
As for empathizing with the close minded and having the patience to work with them, I have no choice, because I shared their close minded beliefs not too long ago.
I agree that we should have some patience with and empathy for the closed-minded as a lot if not all of their closed-mindedness comes from how they were raised. However, I think this can only go up to a certain point. Similar to defooing, you can only spend so much time and effort trying to break through to people before you just have to let them fall by the wayside.
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Looks like these links are still broken, it would be interesting see what kind of new information is out there. For posterity reasons here are links to the archived versions of the 4th and 5th sites.
https://web.archive.org/web/20130515201647/http://cygnus-study.com/
https://web.archive.org/web/20080512000312/http://www.cygnus-study.com/bible.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20080512000238/http://www.cygnus-study.com/extrab.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20080512000501/http://www.cygnus-study.com/interact.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20080512000347/http://www.cygnus-study.com/mystuff.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20081014135247/http://humanists.net/jesuspuzzle/home.htm
-TYFYC
A rejection of the Non-Aggression Priniciple
in Libertarianism, Anarchism and Economics
Posted
Also, if ego-utilitarianism or "self-interest" as you are proposing it, is/should be a universal principle doesn't that make the current judicial system immoral. Although murder may not be in someone's best self interest because of the consequences they may run into in the current system, if "ego-utilitarianism" took hold then wouldn't "I thought it was in my own best self interest" then become a valid argument no matter what the situation? If it's immoral not to act in your own best self interest you can't really bepunished for trying to be moral can you? Also, doesn't this mean everything every corrupt politician has ever done is moral because it obviously was in their best self interest? Sooo, thanks George W.? Which, you can also deduce, would mean everyone who is not a corrupt politician is being immoral (assuming that legal immunity, power, and money is in everyone's best self interest). Furthermore, you kind of went over this in your video, but how is it in anyone's best self interest to take care of their children? Isn't feeding your children in their best self interest? What about helping them learn? Taking them to the park? From what I understand a lot of parenting is putting your child's interests before your own, which in ego-utilitarianism as your proposing it would be immoral.
Also, natural selection has nothing to do with self interest, it has everything to do with survival of the species. i.e. one member of a species has an advantageous mutation it is the benefit of the species that that mutation get's passed down (no matter how much money they are offered not to).
As opposed to the N.A.P. which says simply it is wrong to initiate force....