Messages

I don' t understand yout line about "Go and say that into a mosque".

I find the principles of every religion stupid. I never said that Islam is more sensible...

Actually, I was refering to Christianism, but I *think* I've been quite harder than Islam than with Christianism during my life (Not because I do really thing that Islam is actually worst, but because Islam is still important in Islamic countries and in the West, Christianism is, and it will be even more in the future, an obsolete superstition which almost nobody follows)

And about being a football club fan, I agree it can be childish. Maybe as childish as being religious, so, draw to 1-1.

The problem is that:

A) Religion is supported by the state with taxes, football teams are not.
B) "Footballcluberism" is not taught in schools, Religion is.
C) Being a football club fan does not involve believing in supernatural events opposites to reason.

So, I think the thing is 1-4, at the end...

I' d like to ask you, Andrew... Are you a "normal" religious or are you a "literalist"? It' s important to know in which direction must I go on the discussion... I deeply apology if I asked this to you before, but I can' t remember which kind of believer you are.

Very few will do. All nuts.

I go on.

I am for any kind of social measures to help those who have been unlucky with the opportunities they had, or didn' t had any opportunity at all. I am not for applying those social measures to lazy people who misuse the system. Do you people honestly believe that 100% of people using social services didn' t had other options? I can quote examples, dozens of them, of people who is not. Too many cases to think that those cases are residuals, but the norm.

That's why "left" people tend to focus the debate in "We help people, Capitalism do not". That' s missdirectioning the debate... Modern capitalism also does care of the disavantaged. But the debate is not that. Debating between "left" and "right" is knowing the principles of the economy.

Nacho' s economy class:

Economy is about deciding how to share limited beings. If the beings are infinite, there is no economy.

When you arrive to a desert island you must decide how to assign the limited food... There are many economical systems: "The stronger has all the coconuts, all the rest die" (Dictadure), "If you give coconuts to me, I will do your live easilly, killing the cannibals, building you a shed..." (Feudalism... If the feudal lord is strong, you must keep giving him coconuts forever, not because he is doing something good to you, because otherwise he will kill you). "I decide who harvest the coconuts, and I decide what to do with them" (Communism). "Everybody picks its own coconuts" (Capitalism).

Economy is deciding "What to produce, who does it, for who and how many to produce". The lefter you go, the less is decided by the people, and more by the government. You redouce the number of people deciding, from "everybody" in a market of perfect competition, to "very few" deciding in extreme left.

IMO, the most people deciding, the better. All the rest (capitalism is stealing, corrupting, speculating!) is false. Capitalism, is free market: DOING NOTHING. You can' t do more than that, if your ideology is doing nothing.

Touching almost nothing in economy but a small bit is not "being in the centre, but a bit to the left", is having an almost perfect free market competence. Touching lot is being socialdemocrat. Touching a lot is being communist. Removing social rights and taking decissions opposed to morele is a dictadure, no matter if it' s made by left or right governments.

There are no "futher movements to the right of the 6 o'clock", because 6 o'clock is NOT TOUCHING. All that things assigned to "the right" (Militarism, politial state, reduction of the civil rights, awaking people at the middle of the night to interrogate them, shootings without trial, etc, etc...) have been assigned to the right because left has a good marketing assistant. That things are impossible in a free market framemark for a simpy reason. All that tools of opression are... statal... How could Pinochet be "extreme right" when he used a "government army" to supress the people? How can be Hitler interventionist policies be considered as "extreme right"? National socialist, his party was called... It was.

But... why should rich people share their money? Taking something out you earned legally is stealing.

Of course, if you start from the basis that all rich people became rich cheating, speculating and oppressing, I understand that you want that. It should stealing to a thief. Modern Robin Hoodism, it should be great. I am with you in that!

But not all rich people did that to become rich.

Actually... none of the rich men I know did that. My parent started working as a hobby, as an account man in his grandpa' s business when he was 9. He was the third employee in importance in a bank when he was 17 (I don' t know the name of the employement in English, babel fish tells me "Comptroller"). Sub director when he was 19, director when 21, Shire director when 24 and moved to private enterprise when 30. A life of hard work, without starting of the "pole position" that having a rich father could have put him in. My grandpa had a little car school and he was not able to pay my dad the University (He did not to University, to clarify).

My actual dad' s boss is a man who came from a very little town to Benidorm in the sixties, and decided that he could do something bigger than selling milk packs. He asked for a credit and now he is one of the biggest alcohol dealers in Spain, spreading his business to discotheques and Hotels... Another live of taking risks and hard working. Speculating, opression or stealing level=0.

I know more cases. All examples of good, working people who did not take anything to anyone to be where they are.

In free market there are tools to fight agains speculation, opression and robbery, as well... All that "bad things" lefty people says about rich people is in many cases propaganda. Capitalism is not "Try to become rich at any price", no.

Capitalism is "Try to be rich", period. That "at any price" is something that left people added to make it sound worse than it is.

Associating "Rich", with "thief, corrupter, oppressor, cheater" is a caricature that has made fortune in left circles, but it's not true. It' s quite unfair and insulting if you belong to a "middle/high" status family who did nothing bad to have that welthness, too.

(Intermission: Sometimes I tend to see any people deffending socialdemocracy as a person who automatically thinks those insultant things about my familty, so I tend to be harsh and become too deffensive... I must apology for that in advance, and I promise I will not project those thinks into my friends on this thread)

Believe me, rich people hates as much as yo do corrupted people, and they open champagne bottles when one of those is caught. Nobody with principles likes cheating, no matter if that person is rich or not.

Ironically, and focusing in the European example, where ideologies are more defined than in the USA, the highest percentages of corruption are seen in countries where socialdemocrats rule (Logic, if the system puts obstacles to become free, it makes sense to become part of that system and, once there, stealing)

People who likes left (IMHO) tend to thing that "Rich people is going to share its amorale money with me, a person as intelligent as them, but who did not had the "luck" to become as rich as they are". Yes, it' s one of the principles of left. What "left supoorters" do not tend to have in mind is that "intelligent people who did not had enough luck to become rich" will have to share its money with lazy and unproductive segments of the society.

Maybe saying "Bill Gates is going to give a portion of his fortune to school teachers" sounds good. God, it even sounds good to me. Look it in this way: "Teachers will have to share it's money with pimps, thieves, lazy uneployed and sons of rich people who think they are too good to work". Now it doesn't sound that good, no?

But the thing is worse... Those "scumm people" (understand the quotes) will think "Oh, man... No matter how few I work... The State will take care of me!" and works even less.

Which is a big problem, but it' s not the biggest one: When that engine of the economy, the middle class (those teachers, those mechanics, those house maids) realise that their work is used for keeping that scumm, they will finally end thinking "Hey! Why should I work and keep that "scumm" when I can be one of them and live the life?"

Of course, what I wrote is an exaggerated caricature of the social demoracies, but... The fartest you move to the left, the closest to that it becomes. Free market in "being at 6 o'clock". Doing nothing to economy. It' s saying: "What to produce, who, and in which quantity will be decided by the people, not by me". Saying that "the right" or "the free market" is somethig else (Stablish a corrupted competition framework to keep the nowadays status quo, where rich are rich, and the poor will still be poor and opressed forever) is simply lying.

I was just suggesting ideas... If he goes for the "Jesus the cheater" via, he will probably get lots of fans, and an  innovative, polemic point of view. If he goes to a literalistic vision of the Bible, he will probably find that people laughs of him.

Andrew, to be honest, I was being serious. I've allways thought that many of the "miracles" done by Jesus are indistinguisable from "normal" acts, sold in a nice wrapper. Many of the passages by the bible are likely to be turned into situations for adventure game (Quest for Freedom: By Moses)

Of course, if there is no divine intervention, the better. Cheating is not funny.

I think it would be fricki' funny, but a little bit (well... Totally) heretic, to do:

"How Ieoshua Bar Yossef cheated everybody to became the Messiahnic figure of Jesus"

For example, with the "Miracle of the fishes and the wine", he could get everybody drunk, then go out of the party, and negotiate with some merchmantmen purchasing the wine and the fishes... Or how he walks through the waters walking through the shallow part of the lake. Something like that... Should be funny.

Akatosh, I don' t really understand your point... Sorry

Come on, tell me he is not the best character ever! (Maybe second, after Vegeta) 

I belong to a Skeptic Association... Any Christian game I would make would be a parody! 

The topic is cool... Don' t feel bad.

The cigar thing puzzled me a bit as well... What do you thing I am, an evil cigar-smoker version of the capitalist monopoly character??? 

I haven' t seen it, but ain't  Bond supposed to revenge the girl killed in Casino Royale? Shouldn' t that bring "a bit of comfort" to him?

I never advocated for statal interventionism for solluting the actual crisis... Why do you refer to me? Why don' t you to the people who took the decission to intevene?

If you ask me, I advocate for using that taxes for covering the quantities that people was saving in the "corrupted" banks, and just for that. I don' t see the point of giving money to people who managed money unpropperly. Why doing that? Who ensures us that they are not going to piss it off again? How can I know that they are going to use that money for covering the payments they are facing and that they are not going to imbark in another risky business? "Why should we be carefull next time? This idiots of the Government are going to save our ass if we fuck it up again!!!" 

Give the money back to its licit owners (The people) and they will move that money to serious banks.

What? The corrupted banks will collapse? Yes, that's preciselly what I mean. Sorry for them.

Anyway, I never thought that giving credits to "no income, no jobs, no assets people" was a distinctive stroke of free market policies. (?) I thought that in a situation of a free market, banks would never give credits to that ones who can' t pay. Who could have been the person who pissed it off? Mmmmmm...

http://www.aikenjournal.org/2008/09/clinton-and-subprime-crisis.html

And now I am going to shut up... I have read my posts again and I don' t think I' ve been that unpolite to receive sentences like the last one you wrote, so, for not entangle this even more, you win.

Capitalism is shit, social democrats policies are the best sollution, they have been before, and they will ever be!

Hurray!

What you wrote above is a caricature... Since it is a caricature I am not going to reply to it with arguments, since you didn' t wrote an argument. 

I might reply to you with the caricature of how socialdemocrats policies work, but I just don' t see the point.

As said before... tell us the alternative.

If all the people were like you communism might probably succedd, Petter... 

Communism versus capitalism has been discussed before, indeed. Capitalism has story and reality as a support. Communism has nothing.

Any ideas for something better than capitalism? Ok... I am able to read them. I would love to find something better, but nothing better has been found atm.

Period.

Could you slow down the spinning lizard please? And remove the grey straight line that appears in one frame.

I am saying that because the post above is flawless, I must criticise something... ^_^

EDIT: Grey line removed, but there are two pixels from the nose that are repeated in a frame, and they shouldn' t be there.

In your system, those benefits the Hilton sisters have would come for having a corrupted, probably criminal, ancestor, not for having a rich one. Choose.

Saying "well... that "bad things" you say of communism are not really communism" is easy. If I can use that argument I would never loose:

"-I like my football team. It' s the best world ever. It has one all the champions league so far. 100% of efectiveness... perfect!
-What? It has only one two.
-Well... that two are the ones that count. The rest do not"

See? Choosing the "good/bucholic/nice" parts of a theory and saying that "that' s the truth" is cheating. Seeing how theories work in the reality is the truth.

All the "bad things" we say about communism are because... communism is that. Simply as that. It' s not that "the system is ok, people has flaws". It' s not that there is a judeo-mason conspiracy to make a good system off. It' s just that the system, the most you think of it, the worst it is.