The anti-capitalistic mentality

[bordsilver]

Perhaps we need a new "ism" that explicitly recognises the corruption of humans motivated by greed and power.

Easy: Voluntarism, anarchism and Libertarianism

Note however that "capitalism" in the pure economics sense is different from socio-political or moral philosophy. People often confuse this and therefore blame "capitalism" for abuses of political power or poor institutional governance (or just basic human nature).

 

[CriticalSilver]

Perhaps we need a new "ism" that explicitly recognises the corruption of humans motivated by greed and power.

Easy: Voluntarism, anarchism and Libertarianism

Note however that "capitalism" in the pure economics sense is different from socio-political or moral philosophy. People often confuse this and therefore blame "capitalism" for abuses of political power or poor institutional governance (or just basic human nature).

Are they not all ideological failures as I described?

 

[smk762]

It's a pity that for all the purity we can give our ideas, we fail to translate it into our actions.
I think benevolent dictators are a great idea, it's just they're rare as a sincere fart in church.

 

[bordsilver]

Perhaps we need a new "ism" that explicitly recognises the corruption of humans motivated by greed and power.

Easy: Voluntarism, anarchism and Libertarianism

Note however that "capitalism" in the pure economics sense is different from socio-political or moral philosophy. People often confuse this and therefore blame "capitalism" for abuses of political power or poor institutional governance (or just basic human nature).

Are they not all ideological failures as I described?

No. (Besides other underlying motivations) the core principles are to remove all forms of illegitimate authority of a few over the majority.

 

[bordsilver]

It's a pity that for all the purity we can give our ideas, we fail to translate it into our actions.
I think benevolent dictators are a great idea, it's just they're rare as a sincere fart in church.

Exactly. Hence we should avoid having any institutions that rely on virtuous princes or moral citizens for their success.

 

[mmm....shiney!]

It's a pity that for all the purity we can give our ideas, we fail to translate it into our actions.
I think benevolent dictators are a great idea, it's just they're rare as a sincere fart in church.

How does a benevolent dictator translate pure ideas into actions?

 

[smk762]

It's a pity that for all the purity we can give our ideas, we fail to translate it into our actions.
I think benevolent dictators are a great idea, it's just they're rare as a sincere fart in church.

How does a benevolent dictator translate pure ideas into actions?

Not sure anyone has worked that out yet. I would assume the benevolent one would have a pet -ism which performs flawlessly with all in agreement that a perfect utopia has been achieved.

There's still a chance s/he's not really benevolent, it's actually just a placid and ignorant population thinks s/he is through medication / mind control, or the natural selection of these traits over a long enough period where critical thinking and belligerence have been bred out of or culled from the gene pool.

 

[southerncross]

It's a pity that for all the purity we can give our ideas, we fail to translate it into our actions.
I think benevolent dictators are a great idea, it's just they're rare as a sincere fart in church.

How does a benevolent dictator translate pure ideas into actions?

Not sure anyone has worked that out yet. I would assume the benevolent one would have a pet -ism which performs flawlessly with all in agreement that a perfect utopia has been achieved.

There's still a chance s/he's not really benevolent, it's actually just a placid and ignorant population thinks s/he is through medication / mind control, or the natural selection of these traits over a long enough period where critical thinking and belligerence have been bred out of or culled from the gene pool.

Like the social sciences student cadre at University or the Q&A Audience, or the getup website, or the Greens/Labor voters, or the Twitterverse, or Global Warming/Climate Change/Climate disruption/Climate weirding/ Wamanista types, Or any of the other Socialist Alliance, #seemers, Gay rights for whales AND Tadpoles, I want to Marry a Chair/Tree, Drugs are Bad MMMKaayyyy, I Eat too much so You should fix it, Bludging isn't a lifestyle choice just a way of life, I vote for the You earn more than me so give me some Party ?

I can't say that My ideas hold any purity per se , but the ones I do have that matter to me and mine I do my best to activate and live by.

I think you nailed it above with the single phrase of natural selection and critical thinking .
Once upon a time in a not too distant past lack of the above would find the means of natural selection removed from your repertoire and nullify any sort of repeat in the genetic line. Now days instead of such lineage becoming expunged from the record for good we endure a system whereby there is a complete reversal of such effect as natural selection.
Can't feed yourself or your six children from different fathers, no problem WE (some poor schmuck with a job or a business) will take care of you... Remember to vote ??? .
Can't or don't have the skills to get a Uni degree, Sure we can fix that. All WE have to do is lower the standards and get some poor schmuck with a job or a business to pay for your Arts Degree even if it takes you eleven years to finish.
What ? you have a Drug habit AND developed Alcoholism due to the stress' of modern life and your six Kids ? Tsk Tsk Tsk...Nasty life, here take a free ride and don't worry about it or your kids education cause we found a schmuck with a job and or small business to carry the load. But don't forget to vote ....

 

[smk762]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL1-340ODCM[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZHCVyllnck[/youtube]

I'm not sure viagra is helping.

Who the hell are the #seemers?

 

[southerncross]

I'm on a crappy Satellite link so can't watch the videos but
Idiocracy should be a case study in support of my above comments.

#Seemers is in reference to the twitterverses love of all things that achieve SFA but make them feel good about doing so.
Case in point being #Illridewithyou while the Lindt cafe siege was still in progress and the background story of the global #
turned out to be nothing more than some frightbat on a train saw a woman take a scarf off of her head, she never spoke to her, the woman with the scarf was never threatened, there was no issue at all, she might not even had been a Muslim Woman but is seemed like a good story at the time.

Neck minute #Illride withyou had gone global due to the threats faced by Muslims in Australia and all the while the sun was yet to set on the siege in the cafe.

Seemers IE :Even if there is no problem it's all good to spend an inordinate amount of time, effort or money on it as long as it "seems" like they are doing something.

Desal plants for example, take a look at the Idiocracy of that fiasco for a couple of states here in good old Aus due to the belief that it would never rain again in a country of historic drought and flooding rain. Oh and the advice of a mammalian paleontologist one Tim Flannery paid by the Gov't to tell them so .
How much would a couple of million a day pay for in schooling or public health care ? Instead in one state alone it is being spent on mothballing a never used desal plant due to a bunch of bureaucratic bedwetters wanting to be seen to do the right thing.

Victorian taxpayers have paid more than half a billion dollars to the loss-making operators of the state's desalination plant, despite it producing no water in the year to June 30.

New accounts filed by the consortium in charge of the desalination plant, Aquasure Pty Ltd, show the state government paid $254.34 million in "operational water service revenue" during the 2014 financial year.

Operational water service revenue is a payment made by the government for simply having the desalination plant available, regardless of whether it is used, and the 2014 payment was substantially higher than the $133 million paid in the 2013 financial year.
Advertisement

The consortium also received $383 million in other fees during the 2014 financial year, which were described as "repayments" of a service concession.

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/v...ite-delivery-of-no-water-20141105-11hn1y.html

 

[sammysilver]

I'll drink to that!

 

[col0016]

I'm on a crappy Satellite link so can't watch the videos but
Idiocracy should be a case study in support of my above comments.

#Seemers is in reference to the twitterverses love of all things that achieve SFA but make them feel good about doing so.
Case in point being #Illridewithyou while the Lindt cafe siege was still in progress and the background story of the global #
turned out to be nothing more than some frightbat on a train saw a woman take a scarf off of her head, she never spoke to her, the woman with the scarf was never threatened, there was no issue at all, she might not even had been a Muslim Woman but is seemed like a good story at the time.

Neck minute #Illride withyou had gone global due to the threats faced by Muslims in Australia and all the while the sun was yet to set on the siege in the cafe.

Seemers IE :Even if there is no problem it's all good to spend an inordinate amount of time, effort or money on it as long as it "seems" like they are doing something.

Desal plants for example, take a look at the Idiocracy of that fiasco for a couple of states here in good old Aus due to the belief that it would never rain again in a country of historic drought and flooding rain. Oh and the advice of a mammalian paleontologist one Tim Flannery paid by the Gov't to tell them so .
How much would a couple of million a day pay for in schooling or public health care ? Instead in one state alone it is being spent on mothballing a never used desal plant due to a bunch of bureaucratic bedwetters wanting to be seen to do the right thing.

Victorian taxpayers have paid more than half a billion dollars to the loss-making operators of the state's desalination plant, despite it producing no water in the year to June 30.

New accounts filed by the consortium in charge of the desalination plant, Aquasure Pty Ltd, show the state government paid $254.34 million in "operational water service revenue" during the 2014 financial year.

Operational water service revenue is a payment made by the government for simply having the desalination plant available, regardless of whether it is used, and the 2014 payment was substantially higher than the $133 million paid in the 2013 financial year.
Advertisement

The consortium also received $383 million in other fees during the 2014 financial year, which were described as "repayments" of a service concession.

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/v...ite-delivery-of-no-water-20141105-11hn1y.html

$600 million a year and we don't even use it? Why did the state pay to build it and then give it to a company to charge us for access?

 

[Oldsoul]

Ah Idiocracy..

It is here and it is real.


http://www.brawndo.com/


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tbxq0IDqD04[/youtube]

 

[bordsilver]

$600 million a year and we don't even use it? Why did the state pay to build it and then give it to a company to charge us for access?

From the same party that is paying $300-$600 million to not build a road

 

[smk762]

$600 million a year and we don't even use it? Why did the state pay to build it and then give it to a company to charge us for access?

From the same party that is paying $300-$600 million to not build a road

Is that the same state whose Premier accused WA of "spending like drunken sailors" while pocketing our GST money?

 

[bordsilver]

$600 million a year and we don't even use it? Why did the state pay to build it and then give it to a company to charge us for access?

From the same party that is paying $300-$600 million to not build a road

Is that the same state whose Premier accused WA of "spending like drunken sailors" while pocketing our GST money?

Yep. And the same one that imposed a bunch of protectionist manufacturing industry regulations and tariffs along with immigration restrictions which, since WA is not a manufacturing state and relies heavily on international immigration for labour supply, has the effect of driving up their costs without compensation. And gotta love how states are constitutionally acknowledged as owning the minerals (and hence whatever royalties they impose) within their jurisdiction but counts as a negative with the horizontal fiscal equalisation calculations for the GST redistribution (nationalisation in disguise?). Also let's not include gambling tax revenues in the CGC calculations because the presence of Crown and Echo in Melbourne and Sydney would penalise them compared to WA

WA should secede!

 

[CriticalSilver]

Easy: Voluntarism, anarchism and Libertarianism

Note however that "capitalism" in the pure economics sense is different from socio-political or moral philosophy. People often confuse this and therefore blame "capitalism" for abuses of political power or poor institutional governance (or just basic human nature).

Are they not all ideological failures as I described?

No. (Besides other underlying motivations) the core principles are to remove all forms of illegitimate authority of a few over the majority.

Well it seems to me that regardless of core principles, they have all devolved into centralised hierarchical control structures over time.

I'm drawing the conclusion that all ideologies are fundamentally flawed because they tend to define discrete systems, while reality is a complex and dynamic environment that is always deviant from idealised definitions. So, a named ideology by fact of definition is, ultimately, a failed ideology.

This becomes evident when one considered that although society has been at this for eons, working through the different "isms", we are not living a utopian existence, but one that currently appears to be dominated by a parasitic rentier class competing for their monopolisation over the resources of the planet and a professional political class that facilitates and obfuscates that monopolisation.

That's not to say that ideologies don't have relative benefits over each other, depending on one's subjective position, but to acknowledge that those benefits are relative and not absolute.

 

[millededge]

the ideology that specialises in using semantically dyssynchronous words, ie the one which underpins the MSM and most mainstream politics is the most flawed imo, as the core is a lie

 

[millededge]

the best core position in life is truth

 

[bordsilver]

@CriticalSilver: I'll try to give short responses rather than essays

Well it seems to me that regardless of core principles, they have all devolved into centralised hierarchical control structures over time.

Backing up a bit, this side discussion started with your comment that "Perhaps we need a new "ism" that explicitly recognises the corruption of humans motivated by greed and power."

If your problem with any given political philosophy (or "ism") is that they have devolved into centralised hierarchical control structures, then presumably a better "ism" is one that says that centralised hierarchical control structures are invalid - ie they are explicitly not part of the philosophy. Hence, my response about the various anarchist philosophies. That indeed is their point. Classical Liberalism identified the problem of granting privileges and authority to any individual and hence advocated for separation of powers, audit institutions and the like (such as we in the English-speaking world enjoy). It also advocated a strong rule of law. However, for various reasons, it maintained a centralised monopolistic institution whereby politicians had the power to override the separation of powers, could ignore the audit institutions and could make laws that pertained to the citizens but which it itself did not have to follow. Consequently it has a cancer at its heart because although it explicitly recognised that humans motivated by greed and power can cause great ills, it left intact an ability for such humans to cause damage. The anarchist philosophies do away with the centralised institution as well.

I'm drawing the conclusion that all ideologies are fundamentally flawed because they tend to define discrete systems, while reality is a complex and dynamic environment that is always deviant from idealised definitions. So, a named ideology by fact of definition is, ultimately, a failed ideology.

This is too extremist a position for my liking. The key thing to remember is that people learn. And the best way to learn is often to try out different ideas and run with them. The history of humans has been learning about ideas and institutions that work (with the occasional set-backs and standard intergenerational forgetfulness) and in terms of political philosophy this is no different. The Westminster System built upon the ideas of Lockean liberty was a very large step change in trying out a new system of governance. As history has shown, compared to pretty much any other system tried since it did a fantastic job of granting freedoms and prosperity to the masses.

Is it perfect? Of course not. It is arguable however, that the reasons why it is not "perfect" (in a dynamic general sense not in terms of some "utopian perfection") is because when it was birthed from the system it made a handful of major compromises. The Americans experimented with fixing some of the compromises and did extremely well (indeed was arguably the most successful in human history) but gave birth to new bad institutions that also act as cancers within itself. So I'd argue that it is a problem with the compromises rather than the underlying "ism" per se.

This becomes evident when one considered that although society has been at this for eons, working through the different "isms", we are not living a utopian existence, but one that currently appears to be dominated by a parasitic rentier class competing for their monopolisation over the resources of the planet and a professional political class that facilitates and obfuscates that monopolisation.

I'm not really following what this is about. Sounds like an attack on immoral privileges granted by an illegitimate authority to me. If so, I'd agree with that.

That's not to say that ideologies don't have relative benefits over each other, depending on one's subjective position, but to acknowledge that those benefits are relative and not absolute.

Largely agree with the sentiment. Different aspects of life will generally be better or worse under different ideologies. I'd disagree that there isn't any absolute benefit between different political philosophies however (eg people's lives under Maoism, Stalinism, Fascism etc versus English derived Liberal Democracies).