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I've always felt that the easiest way to see philosophy's usefulness is in refuting bad philosophy.
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ad hominem attack.
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You have no right to be here. You are not entitled to a chunk of land, security of the person, food, water, or happyness.
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And the man isn't entitled to anything then either. But yet he takes it from me, how is that justified?
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What would you do if you didn't work? How would you support yourself if you weren't 'forced' to work by 'the man'?
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I'd work to support myself, not work to support another person on my back.
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Why is the work worth 4$? Your work is required to generate the benefit. But so is something the other person has.
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No, you told me the product was worth $4, and that this guy is keeping $3 of it to pay me $1. I do all the work and this guy sits back and watches. Maybe that's not slavery, but it's fucked up.
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That's market capitalism. That dude owns the means of production. As such, your labour is worth less than the output of your labour.
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But we don't have market capitalism. When your labour is undervalued because the man chooses to pay you less and when the government takes more money out of what you earn, how can you possibly claim that is capitalism?
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The means of production aren't free. They have costs -- be it fortune or effort -- and the proper amount of means of production is a hard problem to solve. Capitalism solves this problem by putting the problem into individual hands.
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Right, and our system solves this problem by putting the means of production into the hands of a few, who take their property by force, who enforce their laws designed to prevent people from competing with them, and who dictate the terms of use of that property as a cartel does. That's not individuals acting, that's a gang.
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Only to a certain extent. But Capitalism does create concentrations of wealth, yes.
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Again, we don't live in a capitalist country. When the government and business are the same people, it's not capitalism.
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A corperation that won't pay someone what they are worth is harming itself.
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Unless all the corporations get together and decide to restrict what they pay people.
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A stable, productive society benefits you in porportion to how much you get from society.
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And when you get less than you put in by a significant margin, that's not an equal relationship.
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The spiral of quality is a trap. In any case, if you want expensive vodka, buy a brita, filter your vodka 5 to 8 times, and try the result.
Based off 'blind taste tests', this turns a cheap bottle into a many-hundred dollar bottle.
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Ok, so my 10 year old Taurus can be just as reliable as the rich guy's brand new Mercedes SL600 if I run it through a filter?
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Yes. I could get a job in Japan, cutting my taxes. I could move to Barbados, or many other places, where taxes are tiny to non-existant.
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I'll have to investigate that. Though why I have to move to escape such nonsense isn't clear. Would you tell a business owner that he should move to the suburbs because the mob is entitled to earn its money?
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Bill does work. Bill did work.
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I'm not an expert on the history of the software industry, but my understanding is that Bill did a few years of real work, stole some code from Apple, and used his contacts to take over the world. That hardly seems to justify continuing to pay him. The only reason anybody continues to pay him is because copyrights create intangible property that prevents others from using his code.
I have always been of the opinion that in a true capitalist system there would be no copyrights. Bill would not continue to receive money for an operating system he himself stole 20 years ago.
Why would microsoft charge us less money? Microsoft, under capitalism, should charge the amount that maximizes it's profits. It shouldn't charge what you think it should cost.
It should charge what the market will bear. When the same corporation that makes the product makes it illegal to compete, that's no longer capitalism. Read the works of
I don't think you are using 'capitalist economy' in any way I understand.
Then please define the term. In any capitalist model I know of the parties are assumed to be on equal footing, meaning that neither party has control of the government. Maybe that's not the case, and you have no problem with government agents assigning road projects to their friends. When the standard for job selection becomes nepotism instead of "lowest price, best quality" or something similar, then that's not capitalism.
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*nod*, and people provide marijuana. If I wanted some marijuana, I could get it.
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And if the government found out about it, they would throw you in jail. (or at least give you a big fine depending on how much you had)
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Stop using roads. Stop using police protection (oh wait, you cannot stop using police protection). Stop using any product produced by any company listed on any stock exchange. Stop buying any good shipped on roads. Stop eating any food that any government food agency has examined or certified. Stop living in a nation of amazing political stability partially guaranteed by their armed forces. Stop looking at random strangers as unlikely to gut you for your shoes -- hire 24 hour bodyguards to keep yourself safe from the starving masses, unfed by government programs. Stop using electricty carried on government regulated power lines. Stop using telephones which use a network which was regulated and supported by government programs. Stop using the radio waves, regulated to the point where you can recieve coherant signals. Start drinking water that other people shit in, prevented by government sanitation. Start getting infected by dozens of fatal deseases, eradicated by government programs. Start fighting wars against the people 50 miles away. Start breathing air as bad as the great smog.
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Stop telling me what I should do. I thought I already made it clear that I've given up and I will give my money to the government, just as I would the mob. I am not courageous enough to fight it. All I'm trying to say is that I don't like it, and if another leviathan were to come along with a better deal I'd jump ship. I have no loyalty to those that steal from me.
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Then, go track your money -- pick 10 dollars of your money, and follow it in a random path through the government. I've even posted a breakdown of where your federal tax money goes, to this board, if you are from the USA, if you want to start.
I do not believe that out of 100$ in taxes, 99$ is lost to corruption. That is a massive overestimate of the amount of corruption in modern western society.
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If the whole system is corrupt than every dollar that goes to perpetuating it is lost to corruption.