http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z9WVZddH9w

File: 12 KB, 300x225, zeitgeist%203.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

Tautoulogic !fcsdUrivQ. Thu Jan 27 11:25:32 2011 No.2424475 [Reply] [Original]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z9WVZddH9w

>>	None !LoVeEKpnh2 Thu Jan 27 11:26:32 2011 No.2424478 Please go die.

>>	Inurdaes !V1sPhobos. Thu Jan 27 11:28:32 2011 No.2424487 File: 20 KB, 422x347, 1292764519301.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>2424475 >>2424478 Oh boy, here we go

Tautoulogic !fcsdUrivQ. Thu Jan 27 11:29:32 2011 No.2424501
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Although i agree with them our current economical and social system is the worst game ever played...
I think thier analysis on how and why it is wrong are far-fetched and weak.

ZEITGEIST is just another poor expressed attempt to interpret the discomfort of society.

Surprisingly they seem to gain at least some group of support. Just like neo nazism, anarchism and Leninism.

>>	sage sage Thu Jan 27 11:29:32 2011 No.2424502 File: 24 KB, 374x600, 006b.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>2424478 >>2424475

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 11:30:06 2011 No.2424507 [DELETED]

OK, let's cut this bullshit off before it starts.

Our main problem is income inequality. I agree wholeheartedly. But central planning IS NOT THE ANSWER.

We can have money and a free market without giving control of EVERYTHING to a central bureaucracy. You just need to distribute income more equitably, so that resource allocations are also more equitable.

The answer isn't communism. It's just applying a more socialization and welfare in an otherwise free market. Europe is on the right track, and ones the Faux News drones stop bleating "socialism is baaaaad", the US will also head that way.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 11:32:32 2011 No.2424511

OK, let's cut this bullshit off before it starts.

Our main problem is income inequality. I agree wholeheartedly. But central planning IS NOT THE ANSWER.

We can have money and a free market without giving control of EVERYTHING to a central bureaucracy. You just need to distribute income more equitably, so that resource allocations are also more equitable.

The answer isn't communism. It's just applying more socialization and welfare in an otherwise free market. Europe is on the right track, and once the Faux News drones stop bleating "socialism is baaaaad", the US will also head that way.

Inurdaes !V1sPhobos. Thu Jan 27 11:33:32 2011 No.2424515
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>>2424507
>We can have money and a free market without giving control of EVERYTHING to a central bureaucracy. You just need to distribute income more equitably, so that resource allocations are also more equitable.

>a few companies get popular, get a fair bit of money
>begin to influence laws once again even with the heavy taxation
>begin to bring tax rates up and corporate influence grows once more

That's what I see happening again. Any idea on how to fix that?

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 11:35:32 2011 No.2424528

>>2424515
A maximum wage. Similar to a minimum wage, but it's a limit on how much money you can take home. After 100 times a minimum wage yearly income, the rest of your "income" hits a 100% tax bracket.

Sorry for breaking your link, I wanted to fix some misspellings.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 11:37:32 2011 No.2424534

>>2424475
Jesus fuck, there's always complainers.

Our current economic system is 90% good. There are problems, mostly with the link between personal benefit and the benefit of the system overall. Mostly this is due to not enough regulation or too much, and it's possible for both of those things to happen at the same time.

However, Capitalism with careful government regulations is prime for overall benefit. We just have issues with "tricks" like leveraging and almost intentionally poor risk assessment, and with a lack of government intervention in areas of public importance where there isn't business incentive, especially in the case of internet speeds and public transportation.

Also, the government does a shitty job of not spending money on stupid shit. 80 billion a year on intelligence, fuck.

Inurdaes !V1sPhobos. Thu Jan 27 11:37:32 2011 No.2424535
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>>2424528
>After 100 times a minimum wage yearly income, the rest of your "income" hits a 100% tax bracket.
>mfw this increases incentive to raise minimum wage

BANANA STICKER FOR YOU

>>	Inurdaes !V1sPhobos. Thu Jan 27 11:38:32 2011 No.2424541 File: 4 KB, 180x149, 1289030387707.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>2424534 >90% good >over two billion people in poverty Err, yeahh... But I know what you mean.

None !LoVeEKpnh2 Thu Jan 27 11:39:32 2011 No.2424547

If you want to fix the economy and decrease the power of businesses, eliminate intellectual property laws, or at least change the system (Landsburg tells of an interesting alternative some economist dreamt up which I can elaborate on if anyone cares.) This is the number one way large corporations maintain their stranglehold, by using patents and copyrights to extract monopoly rents.

Secondly, turn the minimum wage into a living wage and eliminate most social service programs like welfare and WIC and such. (But not SS.) Right now we subsidize businesses that do not provide a living wage by means of taxation instead of the price mechanism. As an alternative to a living wage, I'd consider the negative income tax. In any case, welfare has to go.

Finally, the US government does not invest in infrastructure nearly enough. We all know businesses won't do it. They've made that clear time and time and time again. It just has to be done, if we're to be a successful post-industrial society.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 11:40:32 2011 No.2424550 >>2424528 That's worse than anything the nazis ever did.

Tautoulogic !fcsdUrivQ. Thu Jan 27 11:41:32 2011 No.2424554
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>>2424511
agree

I would fully support a state that combines the good aspects of capitalism with the good aspects communism.

There would just be a maximum of how much wealth one can possibly own and earn privately like max 4000 euro a month.

The remeaning money that one owns goes not directly to the state !
But to a second bank account on a bank that`s formally owned by the state.

One can use the money on that state-bank account for economical investments only.
all things one buys with that money again are formally attached to that state-bank account.

People would still be able to build a reputation and "own" huge companies, even multinationals.
Basically everything would be possible as current day exept the property distribution is more honest.

don`t come with bullshit like "it won`t work because people will have no profit out of working hard." There are more motivations people start a company then just the wealth, the feeling pride or freedom for example.

People are willing to literally spend months "mining" or "hunting" just for the credit of a rare (virtual) sword in World Of Warcraft, and really feel proud about it.
Note that game developers and psychologists could have a special role in this scociety, they`ll figure out what keeps people motivated.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 11:42:32 2011 No.2424557 >>2424541 >implying global responsibility Lol k. I'm all for the eradication of disease in underdeveloped countries, but economic development starts at the local level. If we stopped interfering so much they'd become self sustained or die trying.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 11:42:32 2011 No.2424559

>>2424541
They were in poverty BEFORE. It's not capitalism's fault. But look at this:

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_on_poverty.html
The third world is RAPIDLY becoming first world. And how are they doing it? Developing their own capitalist economies, rather than letting other capitalist economies gang-rape them.
>http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_growth.html

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 11:42:32 2011 No.2424560 >>2424534 But the government doesn't have any intelligence of course they're going to spend a lot on it.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 11:46:32 2011 No.2424575

>>2424554
You're missing the whole "incentive" portion. Maximum wage would be an awesome way of stopping anyone from wanting to improve on anything. Why expand this chain when it won't increase my wage? Why pour research into this project when in the event that it takes off the profits won't result in personal gain for me?

Etc.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 11:46:32 2011 No.2424576

>>2424550
>don't let the unemployed starve
>worse than the nazis
LOL

>>2424535
Actually, raising minimum wage would just cause inflation, and leave you back where you were. The rich can only make 100x more than the poor-but-employed. And the unemployed have a living wage. I wouldn't suggest this, except for one of the arguments in Zeitgeist that I DO agree with: Automation is going to run us all out of jobs. That should be WONDERFUL, a chance for a golden age, and not a threat of mass starvation due to poverty.

Anyway, with a 100x maximum "wage" as imposed by tax brackets, income inequality can't exceed 100 time minimum wage. It's just WRONG to make that much more than any human working full-time. It destroys society, as Zeitgeist shows, even if they get everything else horribly wrong.

Inurdaes !V1sPhobos. Thu Jan 27 11:50:32 2011 No.2424587
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>>2424576
>except for one of the arguments in Zeitgeist that I DO agree with: Automation is going to run us all out of jobs. That should be WONDERFUL, a chance for a golden age, and not a threat of mass starvation due to poverty.

My body is ready.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 11:51:32 2011 No.2424594
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>>2424575
>Maximum wage would be an awesome way of stopping anyone from wanting to improve on anything. Why expand this chain when it won't increase my wage? Why pour research into this project when in the event that it takes off the profits won't result in personal gain for me?

Those fuckers can go die. There are PLENTY of people willing to do all those things with humanistic incentives. Desire to be respected, desire to contribute, desire to accomplish, desire to discover. They are all still there. But if the incentive is monetary? You get the desire to run companies into the ground while you bail out with a golden parachute. Even now, the rich are taking all the money from the economic recovery. Hell, they were taking all the new money BEFORE the crisis!
http://www.leavingmymarc.com/2010/04/09/wealth-and-inequality-in-america-the-rich-get-richer-and-the
-poor-get-poorer/

Tautoulogic !fcsdUrivQ. Thu Jan 27 11:52:32 2011 No.2424600
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>>2424534

>Our current economic system is 90% good

wow you must have some serious mental issues if you really mean what you`re say here.

>starvation currently affects more than one billion people, or 1 in 6 people on the planet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starvation

pic related, yea that makes a fine wealth distribution system.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 11:53:32 2011 No.2424605

>>2424576
Whether it's wrong or not doesn't change the facts of it. People making more than 100x minimum wage are exactly the wrong people from which you want to take away the incentives to grow their money. If a billionaire won't make any more from starting a new project, then why bother?

People make more than 100x minimum wage for a reason. Taking that away doesn't serve to increase equality, it only serves to decrease overall prosperity. But I guess being poor is ok as long as you're not that *relatively* poor.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 11:54:32 2011 No.2424608 This thread, tl;dr More income equality - very good More central control - bad

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 11:55:32 2011 No.2424615

>>2424605
>People making more than 100x minimum wage are exactly the wrong people from which you want to take away the incentives to grow their money. If a billionaire won't make any more from starting a new project, then why bother?
Then fuck the billionaire. Other people who aren't Randian assholes will gladly change the world for the better, for reasons other than trying to make ANOTHER billion dollars of PERSONAL money.

Also, there should be heavy inheritance taxes above the $1M level. No dynasties.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 11:57:32 2011 No.2424624

>>2424605
You really think that these fuckers making hundreds of millions of dollars are year are a *source* of wealth, don't you? That they have somehow bequeathed, through their PERSONAL efforts, the equivalent of billions of dollars of actual wealth to the people?

No. They are robber-barons, all over again.
http://www.leavingmymarc.com/2010/04/09/wealth-and-inequality-in-america-the-rich-get-richer-and-the
-poor-get-poorer/

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 11:57:32 2011 No.2424626

>>2424594
So you just need people who dedicate their life to business, have an innate talent for it, and have a lot of success increasing their personal wealth... But aren't driven by personal gain.

Warren buffet is one of the biggest proponents of raising taxes for the rich. 4 years ago, he paid 20% income tax, less than his secretary. Yet, if he was limited to 2.5 million a year, do you think he'd do anything but retire and play golf? Do you think he'd work just as hard as he does now with the intention of taking his investment profits and handing them to someone else so THEY can invest them?

The rich already invest. I'm not sure why you want to take the money from the people who have success with it so that the government can invest it instead.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 11:58:32 2011 No.2424628 >>2424605 >But if we don't let the rich rape us, they won't take care of us anymore.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 11:59:32 2011 No.2424629 Zeitgeist is an insult to science and reason - not only is it irrational and conspiracy based, it also displays total ignorance in economics.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 11:59:32 2011 No.2424630 >>2424626 Only the rich are getting richer. WHY should we agree to this?

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 11:59:32 2011 No.2424632

>>2424576
> I DO agree with: Automation is going to run us all out of jobs. That should be WONDERFUL, a chance for a golden age, and not a threat of mass starvation due to poverty.

Sort of like how pesticides and tractors and assembly lines did the same thing, and none of us have jobs or want for anything.

>Anyway, with a 100x maximum "wage" as imposed by tax brackets, income inequality can't exceed 100 time minimum wage. It's just WRONG to make that much more than any human working full-time.

If you limit wage earning diversity that much, you will have no economic structures capable of producing 1st-world level wealth. It's not "wrong". It's right. If you think it's wrong, you're probably driven by greed and envy.

>It destroys society
It creates society. This is why I never went to /new/. You people are idiots.

>>	Inurdaes !V1sPhobos. Thu Jan 27 12:00:32 2011 No.2424634 File: 22 KB, 398x241, laughingbitches.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>2424629 >He thinks monetary-based economics is a science

>>	None !LoVeEKpnh2 Thu Jan 27 12:00:32 2011 No.2424635 >>2424630 So you'd rather have 1990's technology at 1990's prices and wages than 2011's technology at 2011's prices and wages? Fasng.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:00:32 2011 No.2424638 >>2424608 >More income equality - very good income equality = universal poverty necessarily. always.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:02:32 2011 No.2424645

>People make more than 100x minimum wage for a reason.
Yes, because companies will pay them that much. What's the problem? Oh yeah, they're tightly bound with the leadership of the company, consequently, they have a great amount of ability to set their own pay. Hmm, nothing wrong with that.

>Taking that away doesn't serve to increase equality,
Erm, as far as income equality goes, yes it does. By definition.

>it only serves to decrease overall prosperity.
When was the last time a billionaire actually did something really fucking cool? Every time I try to see how Bill Gates or Warren Buffett spends their money, it's on charity work that mostly consists of shutting out local farmers in Africa and shit. Bill Gates himself doesn't invest in new, exciting projects, Microsoft does, and the projects themselves come from employees who earn less than 1% of what Gates makes.

>But I guess being poor is ok as long as you're not that *relatively* poor.
Y'know, it wasn't so long ago that business executives in Japan weren't even paid six figures in US dollars. I guess being rich is not OK if you can't top all the other rich people.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:03:32 2011 No.2424648
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Some of you don't seem to know what has happened with income inequality over the past decades.

The rich are taking everything. Since 1979, the top 1% have tripled their income. The top 20% have doubled their income. The bottom 20%? Increased by about 16%. Over nearly three decades.
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3220

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:03:32 2011 No.2424650

>>2424624
Wow, you're just not very bright. I'm not sure how you can get the impression that there's some law in place that allows billionaires to steal money from a company just because they were born with a silver spoon in their mouth.

Believe it or not, people who get paid a lot provide more than that much value to their corporation or company, or else have at least some ownership of that corporation or company. Otherwise, they'd have a paycut or get fired so that the corporation could make more money to pay to the stock owners.

Or did you forget? People own corporations. Not just billionaires, people. Corporations pay people to increase the prosperity of the corporation, and therefore increase the wealth of the people who own stocks in that corporation. Which is just about everyone, because almost everyone has money in some kind of mutual fund.

What you're proposing is that we hamstring the pioneers for running to far ahead, when all that does is decrease overall benefit.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:03:32 2011 No.2424651 >>2424630 That's patently false rhetoric. The growth of wealth of the rich is proportional to the growth of wealth of the poor. Just look at what passes for poor in the US.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:04:32 2011 No.2424655

>>2424638
>income equality = universal poverty
People who argue for complete income equality, in the sense that everyone gets the same paycheck, are indeed idiots. But that doesn't mean that the MASSIVE inequality of today is necessarily beneficial to society.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:04:32 2011 No.2424656 >>2424638 Fuck you. You think there's not enough food to go around? That the only way to have three square meals a day is to fuck over the poor? You're wrong.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:05:32 2011 No.2424659 >>2424651 >The growth of wealth of the rich is proportional to the growth of wealth of the poor. NO. NO it is NOT. >>2424648

>>	Inurdaes !V1sPhobos. Thu Jan 27 12:07:32 2011 No.2424663 File: 52 KB, 684x462, 1278273206893.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:07:32 2011 No.2424669

>>2424645
>
When was the last time a billionaire actually did something really fucking cool? Every time I try to see how Bill Gates or Warren Buffett spends their money, it's on charity work that mostly consists of shutting out local farmers in Africa and shit. Bill Gates himself doesn't invest in new, exciting projects, Microsoft does, and the projects themselves come from employees who earn less than 1% of what Gates makes.
Holy fuck. Do you know where loans come from? Do you have any idea at all? Do you imagine bill gates lying on top of 54 billion dollars with a 25 foot long pole in his hand to poke the peasants who run up and try to take some?

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:08:32 2011 No.2424673

>>2424650
Listen. I'm not saying enterpreneurs shouldn't be paid. I'm not saying they don't contribute more to society than a McDonald's employee. They do, and they should be compensated. But they are paid TOO MUCH! They're allowed to set their own paychecks, we've given the henhouse over to the foxes, and what do we get?
>>2424648

You really think a CEO's work is more important than the honest labor of hundreds of people? That he actually, by his own 24 hours of effort, does more good for society than a hundred farmers, teachers, or technicians?

No. This is getting out of control.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:10:32 2011 No.2424682

>>2424669
>without the rich, how will we find loans
This is getting really, really fucking typical.

WE DON'T NEED ANY BILLIONAIRES. Captains of industry? Fine. Multi-billion-dollar companies? Fine. But the suits don't need hundreds of milliions of dollars of personal property. It is damaging to society.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:10:32 2011 No.2424685 >>2424648 That's a good thing. That illustrates an expanding economy, where everyone is improving their lot.

>>	Inurdaes !V1sPhobos. Thu Jan 27 12:10:32 2011 No.2424688 File: 435 KB, 1512x2092, 1287731151382.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:10:32 2011 No.2424689 >>2424673 What part of voluntary exchange of goods and services you don't understand.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:12:32 2011 No.2424698 >>2424656 You're an idiot. Feeding the poor has nothing to do with income equality. Income equality means no one is rich enough to feed the poor because everyone is poor.

Tautoulogic !fcsdUrivQ. Thu Jan 27 12:12:32 2011 No.2424700
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>>2424635

I would rather see pong being the "new coolest thing" in stead of crysis.

If it would save millions of people from starvation.

And stop this playing with money, a game moralless people will have the advantage in over people who reconsider thier ethical values, i would rather drive an Opel cadett yes.

anyway what you were saying isn`t necessarily true in the fisrt place. that`s what the whole movie is about.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:13:32 2011 No.2424703 >>2424655 >But that doesn't mean that the MASSIVE inequality of today is necessarily beneficial to society. But I think it is. I see only upsides, other than the inevitable envy that causes the butthurt displayed ITT.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:13:32 2011 No.2424705 >>2424685 >The poor: 16% growth >The rich: 95% growth >The super-rich: 281% growth >imply this is OK NO. Simple increasing wealth would be an X% increase for everyone. What we have here is an increasing rich-poor gap.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:13:32 2011 No.2424707

You guys all need to grow up. Every last one of you.

Those of you that are for Zeitgeist- you are for responsible living with one another. Thats good.

Those of you against- feel your individualism is threatened. You should.

So come up with a fucking solution to get the best of both worlds and make sure it happens.

The internet needs to evolve into something better. Wikipedia? Great. Facebook? Holy social networking! Khan's Academy / Wikiversity? That's some good shit. Kickstarter.com? Fucking win.

But where is the cohesion between these movements? There is none yet. If there was choesion between these separate awesome web services it would BE the platform for SOME GOOD SHIT. It would pave the way for OPEN INDUSTRY, which, while still working efficiently through the capitalist system actually PAVES THE WAY for responsible use of resources because everything will move to an open platform. It can be a new standard of being human.

So take everything with a grain of salt, all of you.

Zeiters- Yes, shits fucked up. But jesus christ you must be aware of nonverbal communication. Zeitgeist is fucking horrible at this.

Anti-Zeits- Get off your high horse these guys mean well.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:14:32 2011 No.2424709 >>2424703 >massive and INCREASING income inequality >this is good My god

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:14:32 2011 No.2424711 >>2424659 Okay, not proporitonal, but directly mathematically related. The best way to increase the lot of the poor is to increase the wealth of the economy in general.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:15:32 2011 No.2424717 >>2424698 > Income equality means no one is rich enough to feed the poor because everyone is poor. There you go again. You really think there's not enough food to go around, don't you? You are simply and totally wrong.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:15:32 2011 No.2424720

>>2424655
Whether it's beneficial or not is irrelevant, because it's not a directly adjustable thing. Salary is decided by the laws of supply and demand. People get paid a lot because their time is worth a lot, or because they contributed to the creation of something that grew in value due in part to their actions. Their contribution to the growth is proportional to their benefit, and that is fair.

If a sales rep at a car dealership was taxed 100% above 40,000, he'd do his job. But I guarantee you he wouldn't sell as many cars as he would if he got his commission back.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:16:32 2011 No.2424727 >>2424663 I don't know what "real worker earnings" are but something tells me it's a bullshit statistic.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:16:32 2011 No.2424728

>>2424669
>Holy fuck. Do you know where loans come from? Do you have any idea at all? Do you imagine bill gates lying on top of 54 billion dollars with a 25 foot long pole in his hand to poke the peasants who run up and try to take some?
Why yes, I am familiar with contemporary economic theory. The problem is, income inequality allows incentive for innovation, but does that really justify extreme income inequality?

Think of it this way: If Bill Gates were to write a check to every single person on the planet and distributed all of his money, all his financial instruments, etc., then what would people do with them? They'd put money in banks, they'd invest it, they'd spend some of it, and that spent money would go to a corporation who would put it in the bank, yay. You're creating a false dichotomy wherein people can only choose a socialist absolute income equality system, or a capitalist fuck-the-poor system. As it turns out, it's actually OK to be a capitalist and dislike certain aspects of the modern economy, income equality doesn't mean violently destroying the rich, it means that the economy should be more engaged society as a whole.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:16:32 2011 No.2424731 >>2424707 Here Here! Can you explain how combining these 'web services' would be so beneficial for humanity? And what the fuck is Kickstarter?

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:16:32 2011 No.2424732

>>2424711
The wealth will trickle down, amiright?
Oh wait. Every chart of data in this thread shows that the rich hoard everything, and leave small growth that they haven't found a way to prevent to the poor.

Do you honestly think it's OK for the rich-poor gap to keep growing wider and wider? What happened to middle-class America?

It's disappearing.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:17:32 2011 No.2424737 >>2424707 I haven't watched 2 yet but the first one was so ridden with inaccuracies and plainly made-up shit that the best intentions of the world couldn't redeem it in my opinion. Hitler meant well too, you know.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:18:32 2011 No.2424744 >>2424728 >but does that really justify extreme income inequality? Why does that need justification? What is your problem with extreme income inequality? Maybe it's the rhetoric that rubs you the wrong way. Call it extreme income diversity instead.

Endae Susakii !pHXevoLVeI Thu Jan 27 12:18:32 2011 No.2424747

>>2424731
Here is how it could work: I'm going to give some examples of several different web movements in an attempt to cohesively tie the strengths of all of them together and by such, eliminate the weaknesses:

1. Wikipedia: It is an interconnected knowledge-base self-maintained by its community so that it is not easily vandalized (for long).
***Pros: Community Powered, Set Protocols for Development.
***Cons: Not a very large community, Limited aesthetic and functional interconnectivity between pages, Lack of subjective reflection data on various topics.

1b. Wikiversity / Khan's Academy: Community-contributed free open education resources.
***Pros: Free open education through a variety of mediums- PDF / Video / Audio.
***Cons: Lack of direction forking from fundamental points of view (cohesively mapping the growth of a student's knowledge, especially aesthetically & visually).

2. Facebook: Social Networking
***Pros: Large established networks of people. Self-interested paid developers. Apps.
***Cons: Corporately dominated, Privacy issues, Fake accounts.
@ What does this add? Larger community, more possible exposure of acts of contribution to 'Collective Human Knowledge' (Wikipedia is a primitive, in relation to the system being proposed, form of this). Additionally, with the ability to create apps on top of large data systems relative to individuals and local communities, advanced user-generated services can be implemented by individuals on top of this system.

With the combination of open education resources and mass social networking, it would be possible to establish [diplomas] or reflections of an individuals competence in various fields of knowledge, granted a method verifiable testing would need to be implemented to establish credibility.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:18:32 2011 No.2424748

>>2424705
No, that's an increase in overall prosperity. The gap isn't relevant.

You think you're arguing against some money grubbing fat people in suits sticking their hand in a corporation's pocket and stealing as much money as they can. You're arguing against talented people who worked hard and got a little lucky, and are reaping the benefits. They're investing the money they have, which is the responsible and productive thing to do. The fact that they possess the money versus some mysterious government investment program is a completely useless distinction to make unless it's out of envy.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:18:32 2011 No.2424749
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>Why change the quality of my life for others?

This project will never take off because no one cares for what they don't see.
No one in New York, or any other major city, will wake up, walk outside, and see a city of starving children, limited water supplies, or a shortage of food.

Everyone in a capitalist economy has worked all their life to get to a certain status in society.
No one is going to budge.
No one will let go.
No one will throw away what they have spent their entire lives working on.

Why not throw it all away? We promised a city with no crime, no money, no statuses, and flourishing with peace and harmony.

>Where is the fun in that?
trollface.jpg

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:18:32 2011 No.2424750

>>2424728
This. I'm not saying we need equal income for everyone.

But does anyone really need more than a hundred times minimum wage? Really? Why? It's bad for society.

>>2424727
Sure, and since it's unsourced, I agree. But try all the other pics and sources ITT.

Endae Susakii !pHXevoLVeI Thu Jan 27 12:19:32 2011 No.2424758

>>2424747
Now I propose the development of open industry within this system that would work the same way as open education. Free, open training would be available to anyone so they may establish competence in varying fields. There would likely need to be local hands-on centers of learning for somethings but a surprisingly large portion of it all can be handled with video, and more so with ingenious web apps.

Businesses could establish themselves as an open business and reflect their employees' competence level. Additionally businesses that are related could more intelligently manage their resources. This also has the benefit of making advertising obsolete. An open business has nothing to hide, creating a strong bond of trust between them and the consumer.

So now, if you can get the picture of a working open system for transitioning our modality of education and business to, you probably realize some short-comings... Who is going to develop all this shit? It's a lot of work! This brings me to my next web trend:

3. Kickstarter.com: This is a project-funding site, where people can get exposure to different project ideas and get pledges to a set amount of money, where if reached, the project gets funded. If they fall short of their goal, none of the pledges pay them. Additionally, pledges are rewarded for their contributions depending on the amount they pledge, ranging from little 'shwag' stickers to much bigger and more expensive items or services. It has some very successful projects on the site worth checking out.
***Pros: Funding! It creates incentive for people to develop projects that help out a much larger community. Exposure! People can lay out their plans of how they intend to develop their ideas, inspiring others.
***Cons: Kickstarter takes 5% off the top, Lack of a visual map from a fundamental point of view of types of projects.

Endae Susakii !pHXevoLVeI Thu Jan 27 12:19:32 2011 No.2424759

>>2424758
Now we are getting somewhere. There are many out there that would work to create free open resources for education and industry if they could be paid for it. But it's not limited to just that. Entertainment, sports, hobbies, DIY-resources... you name it. If certain large industries or corporations wanted to jump on the bandwagon and improve their image, their contributions to the world would be reflected on said proposed super-site. Welcome to the digital renaissance.

So what needs to happen to realize something like this? Ideally it could use some help from our friends Jimmy Wales and Mark Zuckerburg to get it quickly off it's feet, but anyone with the ability to visualize this and the resources to start it up can.

There are still more developmental challenges ahead, I don't want to get too into the specifics, but I'll be happy to respond to any feedback or questions.

I would be more than happy to help, but I can not do it alone, my train of thought is far too wide to effectively focus on specific tasks, and I would be much more effective in a position of oversight/council. My name is Endae Susakii and this is my glimpse of a near-foreseeable future. You may contact me at Endae.Susakii@Safe-mail.net

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:20:32 2011 No.2424762

>>2424728
If you were preventing "extreme income inequality" bill gates would never have produced the wealth that created that extreme income, and there would be nothing to distribute. As it stands, he DID create that wealth, and that money will ALL eventually be redistributed to the rest of society. He and his heirs will eventually spend or donate every penny of it.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:20:32 2011 No.2424766

>>2424748
Where were you during the economic crisis? Or before that, during Enron? We DO have people stealing all the money they can. Where have you been?

As for the honest and forward-thinking capitalist entrepreneurs - isn't founding a multi-billion dollar business, and making milliions of dollars a year, enough? Why should it be hundreds of millions? It's destroying society. Zeitgeist is largely bullshit, but they got the extreme income inequality parts right.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:22:32 2011 No.2424769

>>2424732
They don't "hoard" everything. That would result in decreased personal benefit. Believe it or not, the most helpful thing they can do is also the thing that will increase their personal wealth.

The problem with the lower class and middle classes is lottery tickets, rented furniture, credit cards, coffee(especially starbucks), cell phone bills, and booze. If they have no special skills, money management ability, self control, or luck...then tough shit.

>>	Endae Susakii !pHXevoLVeI Thu Jan 27 12:22:32 2011 No.2424771 >>2424772 This

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:22:32 2011 No.2424772

Get rid of money completely.

Anyone thinking otherwise has spent years infront of their television having circus clowns tell them "SOCIALISM is bad" "X IS BAD" "COMMUNISM IS BAD"

when they don't even research on their own, instead, have some "government official" make up fake shit why it is bad. It's propaganda, and they only agree because social conformism is the best way to ensure your family is fed.

The American population is a bunch of pussy bitches, no one would protest for their rights now, they all sit back and let it happen.

>>	Endae Susakii !pHXevoLVeI Thu Jan 27 12:22:32 2011 No.2424774 >>2424772 lel

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:23:32 2011 No.2424777

>>2424762
>bill gates would never have produced the wealth
There you go again. You imagine a giant river of wealth flowing out of Bill Gates' person. As though he were the source.

This is wrong. His ideas and work and contributions are worthy of compensation. But not THAT much! His PERSONAL efforts have NOT produced billions of dollars of wealth. He merely is the head of an organization that has done so. His personal 24-hours a day? No, he has not produced that much good to society. No.

And don't even get me started on the people who simply live off interest with millions of dollars a year. They contribute NOTHING of personal labor.

>>	None !LoVeEKpnh2 Thu Jan 27 12:23:32 2011 No.2424778 >>2424762 But that's not a point I would care to argue. The question is, knowing what we know now, did BG earn enough, too much, or too little? Was he overpaid or underpaid? If we had to negotiate now, what could he demand?

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:24:32 2011 No.2424783

>>2424720
>Whether it's beneficial or not is irrelevant, because it's not a directly adjustable thing. Salary is decided by the laws of supply and demand.
Haha, oh wow. I consider myself a proponent of capitalism, and even I think you're drinking the kool-aid here. You do realize that the system can't be implemented perfectly, right? Supply and Demand, while they are real concepts, don't necessarily represent true values. Social concepts play into the system - if you're a stock owner and you find out that your company wants to hire some superstar CEO who's gonna shit rainbows and everything is gonna be great, you're probably going to be willing to pay him more than he's worth, simply because you don't really know the company business well enough to. Hell, most shareholders don't vote at all, because they only own shares through a mutual fund and can't even name their CEOs or have an idea of what they're paid. Who decides CEO pay? Oh my.

The thing is, executive pay is only limited by their peers - if they ask too much more than others, they'll get replaced. This doesn't provide any barrier to overall executive pay, however, only to individual. So executives as a whole get richer at an accelerating rate, and everyone else gets fucked.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:25:32 2011 No.2424785 >>2424766 People rob money. That doesn't mean anything And decreasing the wealth of the rich doesn't serve any purpose. At all. It's already invested properly, you'd just be satisfying some confused sense of social justice.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:25:32 2011 No.2424786 >>2424771 >>2424772 >citation before post what

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:26:32 2011 No.2424788 >>2424785 >And decreasing the wealth of the rich doesn't serve any purpose. At all. It's already invested properly You don't know anything about poverty at all, do you? http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_on_poverty.html

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:27:32 2011 No.2424796 Do you guys have any fucking clue about what ACTUALLY WORKS? 1. Make something everyone likes 2. Don't directly piss off 99% of the population

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:28:32 2011 No.2424803

>>2424777
Yes, Bill Gates and a few other people engineered the revolution that put personal computers in every home and on every desk. He (with some help) CREATED that wealth, wealth that came from the productivity increase of the people newly benefiting from the use of computers.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:28:32 2011 No.2424805 >>2424788 BAWWWWWBAWWWWWWBAWWWWWWBAWWWWWBAWWWWWBAWWWWWWBAWWWWWWBAWWWWWBAWWWWWBAWWWWWWBAWWWWWWBAWWWWW Great job you philanthropist hypocrite.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:28:32 2011 No.2424806 >>2424769 >It's the poor's fault that they're poor Typical. You really believe that?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:28:32 2011 No.2424807 >>2424783 Problems with the management of a corporation should be addressed, sure. I still don't see how that is an argument for implementing a maximum wage. There's still a failure to identify what the intended effect would be.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:29:32 2011 No.2424808

>>2424762
>If you were preventing "extreme income inequality" bill gates would never have produced the wealth that created that extreme income, and there would be nothing to distribute.
Ah-hem. GOD FORBID Bill Gates has an idea that would ONLY earn him 100 million fucking dollars. He might as well throw it away because it's not $54 billion. Surely only earning $100m would be an almost criminal punishment for a man of his genius.

>As it stands, he DID create that wealth, and that money will ALL eventually be redistributed to the rest of society. He and his heirs will eventually spend or donate every penny of it.
Oh, but you're forgetting your economics discourse. It already is redistributed to the rest of society through loans, right? Forget the fact that Gates probably doesn't even know what half of his money is invested in, he just has the benefit of spending it whenever he feels like it.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:29:32 2011 No.2424812 >>2424805 How am I a hypocrite? At least I give a fuck about the poor. The global optimum will be when the vast majority of the world is first-world and middle-class.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:31:32 2011 No.2424822 >>2424806 We can help them. I'm not blaming them, but placing the blame on the rich for the poor's troubles is a confused perspective.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:31:32 2011 No.2424824

>>2424807
Oh, I KNOW what the intended effect would be. So do you. It is intended to halt the widening of the rich-poor gap, and also put the brakes on people who run businesses into the ground for obscene amounts of money. What needs discussing is the ACTUAL effect.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:31:32 2011 No.2424825

>>2424766
>milliions of dollars a year, enough? Why should it be hundreds of millions?
If millions were enough, there would never have been Windows 95, let alone Windows 7. Enjoy your Windows 3.11.
>It's destroying society
Oh BULLSHIT. It's bettering society

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:32:32 2011 No.2424829 >>2424822 Sure. But pretending the wealth-hoarding of the rich also has nothing to do with it is also disingenuous. They set the wages.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:33:32 2011 No.2424834

>>2424812
It's like you're proposing that we make all future houses and all furniture out of mud. We're the bad guys because we don't care about fire victims, because we're CLEARLY doing nothing to prevent them from starting.

Meanwhile, when the rain comes...

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:33:32 2011 No.2424836 >>2424829 >wealth hoarding Stop that. I've corrected you once. Invested wealth isn't hoarded wealth.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:34:32 2011 No.2424839

>>2424825
>If millions were enough, there would never have been Windows 95, let alone Windows 7. Enjoy your Windows 3.11.
What.

You seriously think Bill Gates would have STOPPED, and just NOT MADE Windows 95, as soon as he was making 100M a year? Bullshit. At that point, someone else comes in with a better product, and Bill Gates loses his maximum-wage income. Just as it should be.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:34:32 2011 No.2424840

>>2424778
I don't get the point of that. It's not about some arbiter assigning income based on people's moral value. It's about money flow driving productivity, given that everyone would like to maximize their income. If you happen to make a billion, great for you. That doesn't mean your a billion times better a person than someone who made $1. It means you did something really good that people wanted to pay for. Unless you got it through fraud obviously, it means the system worked.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:34:32 2011 No.2424843 >>2424812 Then do something that actually does something about it. Grow up kid.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:35:32 2011 No.2424847 >>2424843 >implying I'm not How about you, faggot?

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:35:32 2011 No.2424846

>>2424840
>If you happen to make a billion, great for you. That doesn't mean your a billion times better a person than someone who made $1.
Many people, even ITT, seem to think of it just that way. But let me put it this way: If that's the case, we should have a flat tax. Do you oppose progressive taxes?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:36:32 2011 No.2424849 >>2424839 It was a bad point that he made, but it's close to what he should be making. All this change would serve to do is remove the link between individual gain and overall gain, which is the opposite of the intended effect.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:36:32 2011 No.2424851 >>2424788 You're suffering under the misconception that some people being rich causes other people to be poor. That's not even close to being true.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:36:32 2011 No.2424852

>>2424785
>And decreasing the wealth of the rich doesn't serve any purpose. At all. It's already invested properly, you'd just be satisfying some confused sense of social justice
This idea that investment = consumption is only true in certain arbitrary economic analyses wherein GDP is considered the goal of society. It doesn't matter where your GDP comes from, so consumption and investment are both seen as being necessarily good.

Problem is, in real life, away from the detached viewpoint, there is a difference - social happiness. A lot of people out in the world, hell, in the US itself, are struggling to make ends meet, are cracking from the stress, are unhappy because of their monetary problems. Why can't we, as a society, lift those people up?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:36:32 2011 No.2424854 >>2424834 I don't follow how your bizarre analogy applies at all. At all. We would be better off if the vast majority of people were middle-class.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:37:32 2011 No.2424856 >>2424788 I'm surprised you could watch that TED talk and come away thinking that we need to make people less wealthy.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:38:32 2011 No.2424859

The economic and political system we run right now are a just an artificial system, defined by people.
What people? Oh, the guys that earn a fuckton of money from the system.

DO YOU SEE SOME FORM OF BIAS AND ABUSE POTENTIAL HERE?

How come that people rich for some arbitrary reason are supposed to be perpetually rich, simply because they are rich, as defined by themself and their rich peers?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:38:32 2011 No.2424860 >>2424852 Then lift them the fuck up. Holy shit. I'm still missing the link to maximum wage here.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:38:32 2011 No.2424862

>>2424851
Oh really? There's only so much money supply, and the rich are taking every-increasing shares of it.

And even once we get past the value-of-money bullshit, there are only so many resources. But guess what? The rich have the vast majority of the money, and thus, the control of the vast majority of the resources.

Even if this doesn't make the poor POORER, it most certainly does one thing: It prevents the growth of the middle class.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:38:32 2011 No.2424863 Concise description of why Zeitgeist is such shit. >>2424801 >>2424702 >>2424675 >>2424644

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:39:32 2011 No.2424867 >>2424854 My point is that your proposition is counter-intuitive. Your goal and the result of your method are opposites. Yet somehow your continued "I'm on the moral high-ground" argument holds in your mind.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:40:32 2011 No.2424871

>>2424839
Congratulations on making a bullshit society that hamstrings innovation. Microsoft would be disolved because they already earned their maximum, and we'd have to wait for the next OS company to come along, and no business support for the people already using windows. That's the worst idea ever. Just because you're jealous of rich people you want to fuck up society. Well, fuck you.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:40:32 2011 No.2424874 >>2424862 >There's only so much money supply, and the rich are taking every-increasing shares of it. CONFIRMED FOR KNOWING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING That is absolutely the most hilariously out of touch thing I've read in a weak.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:40:32 2011 No.2424875

>>2424860
The rich are socially irresponsible. They aren't trustworthy managers of wealth, because all they do is use it to make more personal wealth. If there were greater rates of philanthropy and foundations for the good of society among the ultra-rich, I wouldn't mind. But very, very little of their wealth is going there.

The rich has proven themselves unworthy to manage that much wealth, because they (mostly) only use it on themselves. Why else would the rich-poor gap be increasing so rapidly, while the poor hardly make any gains at all?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:41:32 2011 No.2424878 >>2424874 I freely admit I'm not an economist. I'm a physicist. But regardless of money, the truth is that there's only so many resources to go around. Why is it OK for the rich-poor gap to increase? Why should we let the rich do this?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:42:32 2011 No.2424879 >>2424846 Flat tax is more just. But progressive tax can provide more revenue for the government.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:42:32 2011 No.2424880 yall is retards. yall is probably 16-21. yall brains aint done maturilizing quite. kindha sucks huh?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:43:32 2011 No.2424883 >>2424880 extend that to 25

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:43:32 2011 No.2424886 >>2424871 What? It's a cap on PERSONAL INCOME, not company wealth. Go ahead and build a multi-billion dollar empire. But you only get to take X milliion dollars a year to put in your personal wallet.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:44:32 2011 No.2424888 >>2424878 REDUCTIONIST THINKING HURRR DURRR

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:44:32 2011 No.2424889

>>2424862
Aside from the fact that you just displayed that you have no clue about how the economy works(hint: it's not a tug of war. Growth happens.) you did a good job of demonstrating just how flawed the reasoning of the general population is when it comes to this subject. People are undereducated in economic systems and think that making money means taking it from someone else, and that's a sad thing. I think I'll contribute more time to educating people I know about it so that they don't say things as stupid as that.

Thank you.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:44:32 2011 No.2424890

>>2424807
I have never once suggested we should implement a maximum wage. Sorry if you got my post confused with someone else's.

The point is that there ought to be other ways to force income equality that aren't quite so damaging. For example, only allow the gap between the highest and lowest paid fulltime workers in a company to be one hundredfold. So if you want to make $5m per year, you can't have any employees making less than $50k. You would be forced to bring up your lowest level of employee in order to bring yourself up.

I'm sure there are other, more creative ways to do it. Maybe a higher progressive tax.

On a somewhat related note, the argument for a progressive tax that is economically sound is that as income increases, one's ability to acquire new sources of income also increases. Poor people can't invest in real estate, they're too poor. Middle class people are too poor to invest in a corporation. Rich people are too poor to invest in a speculative currency attack. The super rich are rich enough to invest in anything - they not only have the most money, but also have the most capability to earn more.

>>	Tautoulogic !fcsdUrivQ. Thu Jan 27 12:44:32 2011 No.2424891 File: 40 KB, 550x375, 1295202740941.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] <--- WOOOHOOOO !

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:44:32 2011 No.2424893

>>2424878
>Why should we let the rich do this?
It's not you or us that are letting them do this. It's themself that let them do it, as they control the political and economical systems.

If you want to change this, get yourself elected, or buy an assault rifle.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:45:32 2011 No.2424896 >>2424878 "Whoever undertakes to set himself up as judge in the field of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods"

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:46:32 2011 No.2424898 ITT: People who don't give a fuck about the poor mock the people who do Please, guys. Don't tell me that you don't think the widening rich-poor gap isn't a bad thing.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:47:32 2011 No.2424899 >>2424896 Is that supposed to apply to me, or the CEOs and bankers? Think about it. I admit I don't know much, guys. But I give a damn. And I KNOW that what's happening with widening income inequality is not good. Doesn't anyone care?

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:48:32 2011 No.2424902

>>2424854
>We would be better off if the vast majority of people were middle-class.
Where do you get that idea? Who would do the blue collar jobs? Right now we have about 10% poor, 40% working class, 45% middle class, 5% professional class or rich. That seems like a healthy distribution to me.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:48:32 2011 No.2424906

>>2424898
i dont think anyone was ever implying that. but you gotta be serious for a second. we are way fucking smarter than they are, the super poor that is. theyre not bad because of that. but they are less evolved from a consciousness point of view. THAT is what needs to be fixed. How do?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:48:32 2011 No.2424908 >>2424902 >healthy distribution >10% poor No.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:49:32 2011 No.2424911

>>2424890
>So if you want to make $5m per year
They'd take $1 a year in wage and take the rest as some convoluted bonus or stock option that the company lawyers pulls out from a loophole in a loophole. The lowest wage an employee in the company gets will be 1 cent annually then, fantastic!

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:49:32 2011 No.2424912 >>2424906 >we are way fucking smarter than they are, the super poor that is. >they are less evolved from a consciousness point of view. Holy shit. And you're posting on /sci/?

>>	None !LoVeEKpnh2 Thu Jan 27 12:49:32 2011 No.2424914 >>2424899 I believe the last time income inequality was this high was just before the great depression.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:50:32 2011 No.2424917

>>2424878
>But regardless of money, the truth is that there's only so many resources to go around
That's true for consumable non-renewable resources. Which isn't very many things. If you're talking about land, aside from golf courses and hueg estates, rich people don't take up all that much space. It's a bunch, but it's not enough to be a problem that's looming on the horizon.

The fact is that corporate greed exists, but it's a corporate problem. It's detrimental to the health of an individual corporation, but it's not extremely significant. Stopping bad business management in the form of exorbitant wages will help economic efficiency, but not by all that much.

But if someone makes a shitton of money, it's usually in an honest way. Investment is good for everyone, and so is rendering a service to a company that is worth more than the wage your receive. We're all in this together, believe it or not.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:50:32 2011 No.2424919 >>2424911 So what are you arguing exactly? Because they're using those loopholes right now anyway. Many of the super-rich pay lower taxes than the middle class.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:50:32 2011 No.2424920 >>2424902 >Who would do the blue collar jobs? You mean like the guys who just got fired because a machine took their job for 1/10 of the cost(although the product made still costs the same)??

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:51:32 2011 No.2424924 >>2424911 Loopholes can be closed. It's not like I'm submitting that to the House for a vote - it's just the general gist of the idea.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:51:32 2011 No.2424925

>>2424917
>The fact is that corporate greed exists, but it's a corporate problem. It's detrimental to the health of an individual corporation, but it's not extremely significant.
You can watch Enron, and Bernie Madoff, and the sub-prime crisis, and say that corporate greed isn't a big problem?

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:52:32 2011 No.2424927

>>2424862
>Oh really? There's only so much money supply, and the rich are taking every-increasing shares of it.
Are you trolling me or are you really that stupid? People make money by generating wealth. When wealth is generated, the Fed increases the money supply to compensate for it.

>And even once we get past the value-of-money bullshit, there are only so many resources.
Value doesn't necessarily take resources. The value of a new song or digitally delivered software takes no resources.

>Even if this doesn't make the poor POORER, it most certainly does one thing: It prevents the growth of the middle class.
No it doesn't. The stronger the economy the greater the mobility from the working class into the middle class, and the greater the mobility from the middle class into the professional class, or into wealth through entrepreneurship.

>>	None !LoVeEKpnh2 Thu Jan 27 12:52:32 2011 No.2424930 >>2424920 You mean the price is still the same? This can only happen when there isn't real competition. That's a problem, yes.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:53:32 2011 No.2424933

>>2424912
Yes, I afford a life of luxury, where I study people with way too much time on their hands like you all. I'm way more consciously evolved then you are. Probably than this entire board. I just like to have all my cards ready before I attack. Don't mind me you angry little man.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:53:32 2011 No.2424937 >kenyans are fast >therefore, break the legs of the of the kenyans repeatedly till they're slow like us normal folks Ah, spite. Why is it that you tend to have an eventually inward directionality?

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:53:32 2011 No.2424939

>>2424927
Sure. But don't talk so blithely about mobility, when you see what the trend in the past several decades has been. The richer you are, the faster you get richer.

Anyone familiar with an intro to differential equations knows that this diverges.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:53:32 2011 No.2424940 File: 4 KB, 180x135, scruffy2..jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>2424925 >>2424925 >>2424925 2nd'd

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:53:32 2011 No.2424941 >>2424919 That you get paid in personal and trackable work hours instead of money. Now that would be hilarious. Oh wow...

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:54:32 2011 No.2424942 >>2424874 I'm glad someone else appreciated the inanity of that statement. My jaw dropped when I read that.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:54:32 2011 No.2424946

Work or starve is a good way to do things because it forces people to do the dirty shit. For all this Movie's faggy "automation will solve all problems" crap, it doesn't understand how automation works. Automating something never decreases the work load it increases the total amount of work, and just shifts that work else wear. If all manufacturing was automated it would increase total manufacturing capacity and force you to have more mechanics and managers to coordinate all those machines. And of course there are the machines that manufacture your machines and so on. So it demands more total resources to construct all those machines, and resource extraction is one thing you are unlikely to automate. Because mining, foresting, and road building all take place outside there are too many unexpected variables to allow for extensive automation. Unless you have true hard AI, do we have that? No? Then shut the fuck up with your "nobody has to work" crap.

The whole thing smacks of people who never worked in a factory or on farm their entire lives. Hell farming in general is not repetitious just back breaking, so automation doesn't have many applications outside of planting and harvesting. The general maintenance is just random shit that needs to get done. I like automation, but there all limits to what it can do at the moment.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:55:32 2011 No.2424947 >>2424930 What's your opinion on future job markets? Is it going to shrink or stagnate with increasing automation?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:55:32 2011 No.2424949 >>2424875 Where do you get that? You couldn't be more wrong. Warren Buffet spends thousands of times more money on philanthropy than he spends on himself.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:55:32 2011 No.2424953
File: 74 KB, 400x400, mechanicus car-wont-start-its-spirit-must-be-displeased.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>2424946
And this whole "live sustainably" is utter bullshit, there is not such thing as sustainable in a universe ruled by the Gibbs Free Energy equation only ever increasing entropy. The whole plan as I have always seen it is as follows.

We keep using oil for the next century. There is still a 78 year supply of cheap oil(cheap meaning able to produce gasoline for less than 4.10 2001USD/gallon assuming a 5% increase in demand compounded yearly) based on known recoverable reserves. Then we U238 and Thorium into the nuclear fuels Pu239 and U237 respectfully using electricity producing fast breeder reactors. The only thing humanity really needs to continue industrial production is electricity. With enough electricity many things that are not currently economically viable become possible. Even after the exhaustion of all hydrocarbon resources it would still be possible to make hydrogen to fuel internal combustion engines(methane engines are in common use today) using electrolysis. And all plastics we need can be produced from a hydrocarbon base Dupont patented, which can be created from bacterial a sludge.

I want this planet to seethe with humans, 200 billion should do for starters.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:56:32 2011 No.2424956 >>2424925 Illegal things aren't an argument. What do you want to do, make them MORE illegal? We were talking about CEO wage manipulations, and that's minor compared to the overall value of a company.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:56:32 2011 No.2424957 >>2424930 >This can only happen when there isn't real competition. There is competition. Between which company CEO that earns more mony. Or which company can field more obnoxious and intrusive advertisements. Price? not so much.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:56:32 2011 No.2424959

>>2424878
>Why is it OK for the rich-poor gap to increase? Why should we let the rich do this?
Because they are benefiting everyone, including the ultra-poor, the working class, and the middle class when they do it! FFS, try to understand this. Would you rather be poor in America or in Africa?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:56:32 2011 No.2424961 >>2424925 Don't forget to add Goldman Sachs in general to that list. Those guys are some fuckers, there.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:56:32 2011 No.2424962
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>>2424953
The after that we use lofstrom loops to slowly disassemble the entire planet. The largest lofstrom loops possible with current engineering can lift 500 million tons a year and since you could only fit about 1000 on earth it would take nearly 10 million years to disassemble the planet. But it can be done only with proven technology, no super materials or new energy sources needed. You could power them using huge convection towers that contain liquid halite, which would be heated by the hot lithosphere you are uncovering. And of course the job would only get easier as the planet is taken apart: less gravity, more heat being radiated, more materials for building and maintaining the loops. That said you still have to use nuclear pulse propulsion to move the material for the first loop into orbit, about 2 million tons of it. But with nuclear pulse propulsion that is doable. Then we arrange all that matter in a dyson sphere. Then we use nuclear pulse propulsion to go to other stellar systems and repeat ad infinitum. That way we can continue to survive around those stars until they burn out, which in the case of the lowest mass red dwarfs would be about 120 trillion years.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:58:32 2011 No.2424968

>>2424949
>Warren Buffet spends thousands of times more money on philanthropy than he spends on himself.
Good for him. But one man an only drink so many martinis anyway. If all the rich were philanthropists, who bought with their industry the right to shape those public efforts and foundations as they saw fit for the good of humanity, I wouldn't mind.

But the greed. Oh, the greed. It's everywhere. The problem of government has always been finding a way to stop the selfish from abusing power. And just giving power to the man with the money isn't working.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:58:32 2011 No.2424969

>>2424886
Why? What good would come out of that that would counteract the immense harm of hampering incentive? It wouldn't help anyone who was poor. It would harm the people who the rich person employs. It would harm the people who they WOULD employ if they were motivated to expand their business.

None !LoVeEKpnh2 Thu Jan 27 12:58:32 2011 No.2424971

>>2424957
I'm sorry, I don't think that makes any sense. The entire premise of the "people get paid too much" argument is that there is always someone willing to do it for just a bit less. But "someone willing to do it for just a bit less" is why competition drives down prices.

So, either people are paid too much because they have some kind of monopoly (or enough market power), or there is competition, and prices will fall.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:58:32 2011 No.2424974
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>>2424953
For those who ask "Why 200 billion"

That's about the number we can provide electricity for 23,000 years using nuclear breeder reactors. And 23,000 years we could easily lift off enough mass into orbit to provide habitation is space for all of them using the lofstrom loops. Of course if you are stripping the lithosphere geothermal power can supplement this. I want all power available being used by humanity. All the hydrocarbons, all the fissionables, all the wind, and water, and solar radiation.

For the breeder reactors my main source was: Progress and its Sustainability. Choen's Breeder reactors: A renewable energy source, American Journal of Physics, vol. 51, (1), Jan. 1983. Cohen give a good description of the potential of Breeder Reactors. However I must warn you that Cohen is the Edison/Tesla of nuclear power, he is a shameless self-promoter, although with good reason. He often words his sentences to play up is inventions, note that every statement is factual but worded in a way that may be misleading to those unfamiliar with nuclear reactors. Example: Cohen would state that there is a 5 billion year supply of fissionable uranium assuming that all the U238 in the lithosphere was recovered and used in breeder reactors. However given estimated recoverable U238 reserves, an increase in electrical consumption of 10% compounded yearly, and the halflife of U238 there is only a few hundred thousand year supply for the current population of 7 billion. Of course even that assumes that all the 10% yearly increase will come from nuclear energy.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:59:32 2011 No.2424976 >>2424925 People do bad things. Point granted. Significance?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:59:32 2011 No.2424978 >>2424959 Did you ever use your brain to think that statement trough, or did you just regurgiate the "WEALTH TRICKLE DOWN DURR HURR!" argument?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 12:59:32 2011 No.2424979 >>2424959 I'm saying that this is a false choice. It's not "huge income gaps, or mud huts for everyone." There are better options.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:00:32 2011 No.2424982 >>2424971 The alternative is that executives get paid just enough outside special cases. Imagine that groundbreaking idea. I think you guys just have a bad case of the jelly.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:00:32 2011 No.2424984

>>2424976
The current system is weak to such abuses, which arise often enough and cause enough damage to be a real concern. There has to be a better way.

The rest of the thread has been arguing about it. And I've personally been very surprised by the anons saying the answer is "don't change anything".

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:00:32 2011 No.2424986
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>>2424959
>Would you rather be poor in America or in Africa?
I would much rather be poor in Sweden, actually. Is it a surprise that Sweden beats out the US on every single quality of life standard? Turns out they actually take care of the poor.

Don't get me wrong, though, I'm not a huge fan of socialism. As far as income equality goes, however, they've pretty much got it down.

Pic comes from http://tinyurl.com/2drqzlr

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:01:32 2011 No.2424992 >>2424979 Maybe there are better options. I'll sit here while you come up with one. So far, the proposed options result in decreased overall prosperity and nothing else. "Argument from spite" is pretty outlandish.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:01:32 2011 No.2424993 >>2424971 >So, either people are paid too much because they have some kind of monopoly (or enough market power) This one. It is the monopoly of the rich. And they have corrupted the laws in their favor.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:02:32 2011 No.2424995
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Here's a map to put yourselves in perspective. Harsh.

Most of you are Multiplistic-Indiviualistic (The orange one)

A handful of you are Personalistic-Relativistic (green)

maybe 2 people here have shown to be Integrative-Vision Logic (Yellow), but then- why would they even be on this board?

The thing is, the lower you are on the totem pole of consciousness- you probably can't realize the levels beyond you yet. Harsh right?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:02:32 2011 No.2424998 >>2424890 >there ought to be other ways to force income equality Why? What good do you imagine would come from it?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:02:32 2011 No.2425000 >>2424986 >mfw I finally found the USA HOLY SHIT And you fuckers ITT say that this is just peachy?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:03:32 2011 No.2425004 >>2424898 > Don't tell me that you don't think the widening rich-poor gap isn't a bad thing. Only a complete fool would think it's a bad thing.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:03:32 2011 No.2425005 >>2424984 "There has to be a better way" is not constructive. "Don't change anything" is the solution until we find a change to make. Is this really that hard to understand? Do you feel somehow that doing the wrong thing for the right reasons is best?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:04:32 2011 No.2425010 >>2424899 >I admit I don't know much, guys. But I give a damn. Congratulations on attaining the worst possible combination of states.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:04:32 2011 No.2425011 >>2425000 Income inequality is, again, irrelevant. Someone else is a lot richer than me, therefore shitty system QQ.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:04:32 2011 No.2425012 >>2425000 Sauce is shit. And vague on what "social problems" are.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:04:32 2011 No.2425016 >>2425005 yellow 2nd tier thoughts

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:05:32 2011 No.2425017 >>2425004 Wow. I guess we don't have much to say to each other.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:05:32 2011 No.2425018

>>2424971
>The entire premise of the "people get paid too much" argument is that there is always someone willing to do it for just a bit less
You'd think so, but not really. When you get to that executive level, businesses aren't going to take chances on just anybody. They want people they know, people they trust. These people may not be as good at their job as others, and they may need to be paid more, but they're also lower risk and that's what makes the difference.

Not to mention - who decides how much Executives are paid? Whoops, I think I just broke the system.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:06:32 2011 No.2425024 >>2424995 Fuck you! Don't judge me!

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:06:32 2011 No.2425025 >>2424899 >And I KNOW that what's happening with widening income inequality is not good. And how did you learn this? Did you hear Obama say it in a speech? Did you read it in the People's Daily?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:06:32 2011 No.2425026 >>2425011 So, now you're saying that income inequality is NOT related to other problems? That every man is an island?

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:06:32 2011 No.2425030

>>2424971
>there is always someone willing to do it for just a bit less
Becuase when you're desperate to get a job so that you can have a home and food that is not found in a dumpster you're likely to compromise on some issues.
Should everyone live on the border of homelessness and dumpsterdiving because of this?

See, we have a lack of work positions, desperate people will be in ample supply. Hell, we could even manipulate this by employing the 10% that are unemployed for less and fire 10% of the workforce, and then do this again to drive down the price to the point when there's only a marginal benefit to having a work, say that if you're employed you can either have a home or buy your food, but not both. Is this a future you want to see?

People in control will abuse the control they have as much as possible for personal profit if they are allowed to. If we removed all work and product safety laws we'd have carcinogenic substitutes for protein in the meat and slavery reinstated within a decade. And some people would be filthy filthy rich, and live in not just gated communities but in gated cities, we'd see a rich-poor divide so enormous that the poor would develop into their own species given enough time.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:06:32 2011 No.2425031 >>2425024 cant tell if joking...

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:07:32 2011 No.2425036 >>2425018 I'm waiting for the "therefore" at which point you're actually presenting an argument instead of saying "I don't like the way some things are"

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:07:32 2011 No.2425038

>>2425018
>Not to mention - who decides how much Executives are paid? Whoops, I think I just broke the system.
This is really the issue. It all comes down to conflicts of interest, and the Principle Agent problem.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal-agent_problem

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:08:32 2011 No.2425044 >>2425036 <<this >>2424759 >>2424758 >>2424747

>>	None !LoVeEKpnh2 Thu Jan 27 13:08:32 2011 No.2425047 >>2425018 Someone is always willing to do it for less, until profits have been competed away. This is why markets are efficient. Yes, eventually you have competed away your profits, at which point you've achieved efficiency. Yay.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:09:32 2011 No.2425055 >>2424986 They can afford to. They're a small group of well-educated rich white people. That wasn't one of your choices.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:10:32 2011 No.2425059

This thread summed up.

Team A: "SLAVERY IS OK, FUCK YEAH!(even though i may be a slave myself, but my master said it's ok and beneficial to the slaves)"

Team B: "Are you fucking retarded?"

Team A: "No, because my master said i'm smart if i belive like him"

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:10:32 2011 No.2425060

>>2425047
But executives don't want to do this. They want to keep profits high as they can, so they can take it as a personal bonus. They don't want to use resources efficiently primarily. They only what that inasmuch as it increases their personal paychecks.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:11:32 2011 No.2425063 >>2424995 Holy shit. I get that I think like a green. this is a neat way of organizing a huge handful of people who in my mind, just dont get it.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:11:32 2011 No.2425064 >>2425055 So now everyone in Sweden is rich?

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:11:32 2011 No.2425068

>>2425044
I don't see how that follows from anything. Let's get together and do shit because CEOs get paid more than I think they should?

It would be better if you provided the argument, the link to the proposed change, and then a specific proposed change.

>>	None !LoVeEKpnh2 Thu Jan 27 13:12:32 2011 No.2425072 >>2425060 Right, people like high profits. This is why competition is so important.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:12:32 2011 No.2425076

>>2425038
Yay! Thank you! Somebody honestly answered the question.

I consider myself a huge fan of capitalism, but I can count errors in the system. On the most fundamental level, certain assumptions are passed about capitalism, and are oft forgot about outside of macroeconomists. For example, the assumption that knowledge is essentially free and that people are rational. Knowledge problems (adverse selection, principal-agent, and hell, just asymmetric information in general) will destroy any capitalist system that doesn't account for them, hence the need for regulatory measures to keep the system running.

Executive pay is an example of such a problem. Principal-agent. The fox is in the henhouse and nobody seems to care.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:14:32 2011 No.2425086 >>2425076 And it doesn't matter if you care until you come up with a solution. Intentions don't count for much.

>>	None !LoVeEKpnh2 Thu Jan 27 13:15:32 2011 No.2425087 >>2425076 The assumption of rationality is an idealization, to be sure, but it isn't that far off.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:15:32 2011 No.2425090

>>2424978
Increasing wealth and prosperity increases the rich-poor gap. It's not a bad thing. It's a good thing. The best thing you can do for the poor is improve the economy. People with emotional problems don't want to do it because that would help the rich even more.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:15:32 2011 No.2425092

>>2425047
Love, you ignore rampant knowledge problems in capitalism. Companies are willing to accept substandard executives because otherwise they'd expose themselves to additional risk. That risk wouldn't exist if knowledge were perfect, but it's not. Hiring an executive is a lot like buying a used car - the candidate knows just how good an executive he is, just like the car salesman knows exactly what's wrong with the car, but you can never know if they're asking a fair price.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:16:32 2011 No.2425100 >>2425090 >Increasing wealth and prosperity increases the rich-poor gap. Can you demonstrate this? Why would it not leave the rich-poor gap at relatively the same ratio?

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:17:32 2011 No.2425109
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Forget the power of technology and science, forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim darkness of the far future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting Gods.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:17:32 2011 No.2425113

>>2425018
The board of directors, who represent the owners, decide how much to pay the CEO. The CEO is the most important job in the company, and if they can afford it, the board will pay top dollar to get the best man for the job. People want to stop this for some crazy white-guilt reason.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:17:32 2011 No.2425116 >>2425086 Ok, then my solution is to limit executive pay to a certain ratio to the lowest paid employee. Consequently executives will have to close the income gap in order to personally enrich themselves.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:18:32 2011 No.2425117

>>2425047
>This is why markets are efficient. Yes, eventually you have competed away your profits, at which point you've achieved efficiency. Yay.

Oh no, you don't stop at that. This is when you start to erode on other aspects than profit margin. You move production to china, you bribe the local goverment in china to be able to skip out on workplace safety. You swap the product materials to compounds that are cheap, but not tested for human safety. When it starts to get tigth again you order the managers to keep workers overtime with no monetary compensation.

Perhaps efficient in the products per dollar metric. But there are other aspects to consider.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:18:32 2011 No.2425121 >>2425026 On the contrary, everyone is interrelated, which is WHY income diversity is a good thing.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:18:32 2011 No.2425125

simply put, the vast majority can't do anything but bicker until you are able to see the world as a whole, and distinguish what has leverage on many levels. You all good do well to read a book called a brief history of everything. It's not a fucking bible to go by but it will give the majority of you a clearer vantage point of complex social, economic, religious, gender issues. Because like it or not, everything is inter-related. Theres even an audiobook up on piratebay for those of you more used to only relying on youtube videos ;) http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4563698/Ken_Wilber_Kosmic_Consciousness-Brief_History_Everything

inb4 angry egotistical scientists

/thread

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:19:32 2011 No.2425129 >>2425113 See >>2425092 CEOs get paid what they get paid not because they're worth it, or because they provide that much wealth, they're paid at that rate because of risk aversion. If they were competitively valued, they'd be paid significantly less.

None !LoVeEKpnh2 Thu Jan 27 13:20:32 2011 No.2425132

>>2425092
Yes, I know all about lemon problems and imperfect information. This is why I consider myself fairly left-wing. Market problems are everywhere. High executive salaries are not, by themselves, an indication of a problem, though, principle agent or not. This is why I suggest that a lack of competition may be the underlying problem, as it is one of the tried-and-true ways of extracting rents in order to "overcompensate" people.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:20:32 2011 No.2425134 >>2425109 Read this and think backwards you goon. http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html

>>	None !LoVeEKpnh2 Thu Jan 27 13:22:32 2011 No.2425143 >>2425117 Those are short-term problems. We experienced them ourselves during our own industrial revolution. They are temporary. I do agree that countries which do not have a relatively open market should be an autoban, though.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:22:32 2011 No.2425146 lololololollerskates There are only 3 people in this thread. 3 schizophrenics.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:22:32 2011 No.2425148

>>2424978
Here's an idea.

People use locusts as money and food. Some people have a lot of locusts, some people don't have a lot of locusts. They pool their locusts into a swarm. The swarm has 4000 locusts. 5 people have 500 of the locusts each, 50 have 30 each. Together in a swarm, the swarm grows rapidly, doubling each year. Each year, each person eats 10 locusts.

In 2 years, the "rich" now have 1940 locusts each. The "poor" have 60 locusts each. The gap between the rich and the poor just grew from ~16.6 to ~32.6. Yet, everyone's richer. The situation becomes even better when you have locust loans, and individual locust production, etc.

The rich don't steal from the poor, not anymore.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:23:32 2011 No.2425153 >>2425148 too much math; didnt read

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:24:32 2011 No.2425160 >>2425148 *from ~1660% to ~3200%

>>	Implying Thu Jan 27 13:26:32 2011 No.2425169 >>2425148 What about inflation?

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:26:32 2011 No.2425173

>>2425153
Point is that the compounding of wealth against a rate of consumption of that wealth in a case where the consumption does not grow proportionally to the wealth itself results in a larger gap between the people who have much and the people who have little, but if you go under the assumption that the investment of wealth is a cause of the growth, it's a good system for overall prosperity despite the fact that it increases the gap between the rich and the poor.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:27:32 2011 No.2425175

>>2425148
That works fine except that cost of living increases mean that the poor have slightly fewer locusts than they started with while the rich accumulate thousands of locusts and say that they earned them and it's not fair for anyone else to have one.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:27:32 2011 No.2425178

>>2425143
Even if we assume there was no outsourcing to china we still end up in a situation where the investor/owner upper segment of the company tries to maximize their profit while they strive to compress and minimize the "Expenses"/wages of the lower segment, the workers.

This means that the worker/employee always loses. Because as the company strives to maximum efficiency it tries to minimize and/or remove all expenses, which the employee is. Eventually he'll be removed from the equation.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:27:32 2011 No.2425179 >>2425169 The people are on adderall, they don't like to overeat.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:28:32 2011 No.2425181 Endae Susakii, are you familiar with John Robb and his Global Guerillas blog?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:28:32 2011 No.2425185 >>2425063 Enjoy your green. Turquoise here.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:29:32 2011 No.2425192 >>2425175 It was only meant as an illustration of how the wealth gap is a result of economic growth. It's a bad economic model because generally locusts aren't that tasty.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:30:32 2011 No.2425195 >>2425178 So you're saying inefficient wastes shouldn't be removed from the system? Nice system, idiot. If poor people weren't genetic trash (hint: why are they all so ugly?) they would start their own businesses and make money that way.

>>	Endae Susakii !pHXevoLVeI Thu Jan 27 13:31:32 2011 No.2425198 >>2425181 I am not. Is there a specific post you are referring to?

None !LoVeEKpnh2 Thu Jan 27 13:31:32 2011 No.2425202

>>2425178
This has been a concern since the industrial revolution. History has not borne out that conclusion. While, normally, arguments based on historical trends are very weak, it does at least suggest that we don't have a finite number of problems to solve. When one segment is automated, that frees up human resources to work on other problems.

Of course, these transitions can be painful. I don't know what to do about it. Nevertheless, executive salary seems to have absolutely nothing to do with it.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:33:32 2011 No.2425213 >>2425185 yellow here, get your head out of the clouds, turquoise!

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:34:32 2011 No.2425218

So what happens with our current so fantastic economic system when cheap ass robots have displaced 90% of the workforce? Suddenly we have 90% less consumers, there's no profit in mass production any longer because there's no one to buy all shit you produce. All the money that is left will eventually be used on food and basic products and end up with the 10% that own the robots and profit from the products that are sold? The cash flow will stagnate because there's no work to be done for money anymore.

Oh, global economic collapse anyone? Sure is a good system if that's possible /sarcasm.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:34:32 2011 No.2425221 >>2425218 can not tell if troll

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:35:32 2011 No.2425226 >>2425218 So... the robots will have all the money?

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:37:32 2011 No.2425241

>>2425100
You can find it in any chart of increasingly prosperous countries, including purportedly communist China. The reason the ratio doesn't stay the same is because as prosperity increases a whole new economic structure develops. New positions are created, and new hierarchies. There is a whole new spectrum of wealth. New possibilities of wealth are created, and some people will move into that wealth. Obviously, just because the richest person doubles their wealth doesn't mean the poorest person doubles their wealth, which would be required for the ratio to remain constant. There are always very few "super-rich" who are able to take maximal advantage of the opportunities.

tldr; the more economic opportunity there are, the more levels of wealth will be filled, and the greater the spread between richest and poorest.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:37:32 2011 No.2425245

>>2425218
As consumers are eradicated by machines, poverty is going to become a very serious first world problem. This is going to lead to epic taxation and dependence on the state, until the problem gets so large (hopefully luddites won't intervene) that it becomes the norm. At some point it's going to snap over, and government will be seen as the entity that distributes the labor of the machines, and then things will start getting better in a very serious way.

The pitfalls are Luddites establishing legislation against machines, or the rich exerting undue political influence to fuck over the 90% of poor people. If politicians can follow the wind and Luddites can see the future for once, we'll make heaven on earth.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:38:32 2011 No.2425257 >>2425116 Then they'll either have to make due with a shit CEO, reward him in stocks that are except from the limit, or move the company to Dubai where the rules don't apply. Your solution won't hurt the rich much. It may hurt the middle class a lot.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:39:32 2011 No.2425258 >>2425218 So your view is that there will be all the food anyone could eat, all the products anyone could ever want, and all the entertainment that everyone could ask for... And that would drive 90% of people into poverty?

>>	None !LoVeEKpnh2 Thu Jan 27 13:39:32 2011 No.2425261 >>2425218 I'm sorry, are you suggesting that we have solved all problems? Because, when 90% of the workforce is free to work on other problems, it seems like we get more problems to solve. I didn't realize we'd, you know, run out of shit to do.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:40:32 2011 No.2425269 >>2425245 that's not how automation works see>>2424946

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:40:32 2011 No.2425272

Not to distract everyone from the political discussion... but I watched the movie yesterday, and my take on it was that it could have been about an hour shorter and it would have been 10X better.

All that bullshit about the "Venus Project" needs to be completely removed.

The movie's presentation of what's wrong with the current system was fucking genius. But their fantasy-science-fiction-robot-world-hivemind pile of shit solution took all credibility from the movie.

Yes, we will get to a point where technology makes money and politics obsolete. But we aren't there yet, and proposing that we just magically "get there" by just deciding to do it is retarded.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:41:32 2011 No.2425278

>>2425148
The analogy is invalid, the poor earns 11 locusts per year but have to eat 10 of them, they either work fifty years to achive a surplus of 50 locusts while living in a shitty aparment or something or they take a 50 locust loan and build a house, while still earning 11 locusts per year. However, the poor have to pay back 70 locusts on that loan. Which incidentally goes to pay the interest the rich guys get from just having a shitton of locusts.

So the poor, having less locusts have to pay more for a service than the rich guys because they have to do it via a loan. They also have to work their ass off every day to maintain these borderline survivable lifestyle while the rich guy lies on a beach all day.

So the total amount of locusts did increase, because the poor motherfucker is working, but he didn't get any benefits from it.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:41:32 2011 No.2425282 >>2425269 >automation causes more required work to manage than it does Not even close, sorry. You can say something, but that doesn't make it true.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:41:32 2011 No.2425284 >>2425129 That doesn't make any sense to me. Companies will buy the best CEO they can afford. They go by the CEO's track record at other companies. They try to incentivise him with bonuses tied to company performance.

>>	None !LoVeEKpnh2 Thu Jan 27 13:43:32 2011 No.2425290 >>2424947 >>2425202

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:43:32 2011 No.2425296

>>2425278
Sounds to me like the poor guy had a house because the rich guy had locusts to lend him. If you're saying that people doing the shittiest jobs currently only make enough to eat, have a house, and have minimal luxuries...yes. That's true. Take it up with the hunger police.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:46:32 2011 No.2425314 >>2425213 I knew you'd say that, because I know the deep processes. That and because I'm a FUCKING MAGICIAN.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:46:32 2011 No.2425316

>>2425282
It didn't say that, it said that automation never decreases the total workload because if just frees up workers to do other work. Namely resource extraction, unless you have human level AI resource extraction and farming will remain a human venture. And the more machines you have producing things them more resources you need. Automation does not eliminate jobs or create free time, it invalidates some jobs and provides and incentive for new ones by creating a greater demand for resources, maintenance, and management.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:46:32 2011 No.2425317 >>2425272 I don't think it needs to be removed, but the video is sort of glorifying it. they should make a point that intelligent designs LIKE [venus project examples] would be fine.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:48:32 2011 No.2425321

>>2425198
What you were talking about is EXACTLY the sort of thing he tends to blog about.

http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2010/11/eaas-economy-as-a-service.html
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2010/10/journal-different-visions-of-the-future
.html

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:49:32 2011 No.2425323 >>2425316 I read it completely wrong. Thanks for the clarification.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:49:32 2011 No.2425325

The answer to this thread is this: >>2424749
and this: >>2425272

If you think you can do better than New York City, then you're just going to have to go out and do it. Then maybe people will migrate over to your new city. But see, we already HAVE New York City, and half a millennium of development and progress were required to get it. So, you'd better get started now. On the plus side, you can at least leverage what was learned from previous cities.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:49:32 2011 No.2425327

>>2425218
Robots displaced way more than 90% of the workforce 100 years ago. (Robots include tractors and threshers and all sorts of factory automation). The worforce found new jobs, which expanded demand into things the people 200 years ago never thought possible -- like indoor shopping malls and pizza delivered to your door. The people who talk about post-scarcity don't realize we're already living in it. Demand always expands to provide work for anyone willing to provide services. The more we have, the more we want. That has the side effect of keeping everyone employed.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:50:32 2011 No.2425329

>>2425296
>Sounds to me like the poor guy had a house because the rich guy had locusts to lend him.

The rich guy have his money and leisurely lifestyle because the poor guy and his family and cousins and neighbours all spend 30% of their lives working for him.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:51:32 2011 No.2425334 >>2425329 Remove rich guy from the equation and everything's better, right?

>>	Endae Susakii !pHXevoLVeI Thu Jan 27 13:51:32 2011 No.2425335 >>2425321 Awesome, thanks for the link. I'll try and get in touch with him.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:51:32 2011 No.2425336 >>2425321 Also this: http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2010/03/journal-resilient-communities-and-darkn ets-featured-in-time-magazine.html

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:54:32 2011 No.2425353 The fuck is this AQAL bullshit. I'm trying to read about it but the shear hippy dippy california new age cultness of it keeps flipping my bullshit circuit breakers.

Endae Susakii !pHXevoLVeI Thu Jan 27 13:56:32 2011 No.2425359

>>2425336
"Somewhere in the suburbs there is an unemployed 23-year-old who is plotting a cultural insurrection, one that will resonate with existing demographic, cultural and economic trends so powerfully that it will knock American society off its axis. "

LOL that hits home fucking hard.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 13:56:32 2011 No.2425360 >>2425353 Same here. It just serves to put psychology as superior thinking to, you know, useful shit.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:01:32 2011 No.2425381

You know, I'm not so sure the whole 'technology dern terk er jerbs' thing will actually become an issue in America anymore. We've sent so much of our production overseas and switched so many people into bs service sector jobs that its become a non-issue for as long as we have old people that don't want to do all their business by computer.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:08:32 2011 No.2425425 >>2424475 >science.png

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:08:32 2011 No.2425427

>>2425316
Sorry, but no.
Automation reduces the total number of jobs availible. If you replace 1000 workers with 10 mechanics and few tonnes of hardware then you just got rid of 990 jobs. The rest remains the same. Whoever produces the automation equipment already have their fixed employees, the mining company digging out the materials already have their employees. What happened was that 990 people lost their job.

Of course maybe 100 of manages to do something productive, but that still leaves you 890 people without a job. It's not just that automation alone steals peoples jobs, general improvements in technology gives a higher output per worker too. A mining worker operating with the latest hyperdrive laserdrill that turns a mountain into metal ingots at a pace of one cubic km per hour will ensure that the company won't bother to buy more drills and employ more people, unless the demand is extremely high.

We're constantly striving to do more with less people in all fields of work. Eventually we'll have this turn into 50% of the population being permanently unemployed, then 75%, then 99% and then 100%. Unless someone figures out a decent solution to this then shit will hit the fan probably long before we have a chance to get to 50%.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:09:32 2011 No.2425430

>>2425381
Actually the US has nearly three times the total industrial output of China and Germany has nearly twice that of China. It's just that our products are components that are made by machines that are then assembled oversees by hand and reimported with the labor cost added. That's the only reason their is a trade imbalance. And before your faggots go "derp derp mean ofld Capitalism", the reason China can do that is because it is still classified as a "developing nation" and holds onto that status like grim death to keep preferential trade agreements. It will loose that status eventually, and loose those jobs.

>>	None !LoVeEKpnh2 Thu Jan 27 14:10:32 2011 No.2425437 >>2425427 I would love to hear your theories of how the US could 1) get better products 2) increase population AND 3) automate under your awesome theory. Because that's what has happened since the late 1800s.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:12:32 2011 No.2425441 >>2425427 not to worry though, with half the population gay the birthrate will drop precipitously and the 880 jobs lost won't even be missed.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:12:32 2011 No.2425446 >>2425334 Yes. The rich guy is gone, but the locusts aren't. Redistribute them, and then everyone can have a house and a meal without being in massive debt.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:14:32 2011 No.2425453

>>2425427
So your proposal is that benefitting from free labor will drive us into poverty. That all of these products will be produced for much cheaper and no one will afford to buy them?

Sounds to me that just results in really cheap products and really wealthy corporations that then pay taxes. We have a huge government surplus which results in a more widespread welfare program so that the unemployed reach a salary similar to their working salary. Having a job gets you extra luxuries, but not having a job becomes an option.

DYSTOPIA EVERYONE RUN

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:16:32 2011 No.2425459

>>2425453
>more widespread welfare program
THIS is the linchpin. If you stick to strict capitalism, all the unemployed people literally have NO money. That's when the system collapses. But if you give everyone a little money just for being around, the system will be fine.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:17:32 2011 No.2425462

>>2425446
The flaw in your argument is that interest is proportional to the demand for loans compared to the money supply(basic supply and demand).If he only wants 50 locusts he can get that for hardly any interest, or else he wouldn't take the loan.

And sorry, "getting rid of the rich guy" would leave the locusts only if you actually murdered him, not if he decided he just decided to stop existing. There's a reason he's the one with the locusts, he owns them. He earned them, or else inherited them.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:19:32 2011 No.2425467

>>2425462
>If he only wants 50 locusts he can get that for hardly any interest, or else he wouldn't take the loan.
Sorry, there's a leverage issue if not taking the loan means being homeless.

>There's a reason he's the one with the locusts, he owns them. He earned them, or else inherited them.
It doesn't matter what happened to him. Your bank account is a representation of resources, not the actual resources. And when you die, you don't take either of them with you.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:19:32 2011 No.2425468

>>2425459
Well, kind of. We're not strictly capitalistic right now. If we were to switch to pure capitalism tomorrow and then this automation thing happened, the result would be rock bottom prices for products. Companies could hire someone to move a stapler freelance and that would feed him for a week.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:21:32 2011 No.2425482 >>2425468 To expand, you could just see fewer hours everywhere. 1000 laborers become 1000 mechanics working an hour a week.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:22:32 2011 No.2425485

>>2424995
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Theory
> It has been claimed to offer a "Theory of Everything"[4] described as a "post-metaphysical"[5] worldview and a "trans-path path"[6] for holistic development; however, the discourse has received limited acceptance in mainstream academia[7] and has been sharply criticized by some for insularity and lack of rigor.[8]

Yeah, this one guy's philosophy is hardly the Truth.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:28:32 2011 No.2425500 keep playing with your dicks, gentlemen.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:28:32 2011 No.2425502

>>2425437
Because in the late 1800 you could build a factory with aspects of automation but still need hundreds or even thousands of workers to get shit done.

Today, with articulated programmable robotic arms in combination with machine vision and whatnot you can build a robot that have better precision than a human, work faster than a human and also work around the clock. It can also have much greater strength than a human and a much bigger range of motion. All in a single robotic arm.

This is no longer partial automation that employs humans as essential operator, this is full automation.

If you fifty years ago built a factory with top level automation you would've added human jobs. You build one today and you remove human jobs. Previously the US expanded the service industry when the factory workers needed something new. Now the service industry is facing the same problem, and there's starting to be awfully few positions that seem to be imprevious to full automation.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:31:32 2011 No.2425518 >>2425502 And that's still only a good thing. More product for less human labor means either a more luxurious lifestyle or fewer working hours.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:31:32 2011 No.2425522 Going off topic here, but would it be possible to cover all the roads with snow-proof tunnels and ride bicycles year round if we scrapped all the cars?

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:32:32 2011 No.2425524

>>2425502
This. But I'm also skeptical that the time and labor of people will become worthless when basic needs are taken care of. If there's ANY use for human effort at ALL, it will be a living wage, because all the essential stuff is made with essentially no human effort, right? So it will be near-zero in price. Any CEO who thinks otherwise will quickly realize there is no-one who can pay high prices, and then prices will drop.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:33:32 2011 No.2425533

>>2425427
>replace 1000 workers with 10 mechanics

But you don't your replace them with 100 Machines, 10 mechanics, 1 manager, 10 salesmen(because you want to sell more of your product), and the rest leave to mine metal for your machines to make products out of because they make more products per hour, causing an increased demand for the resources.

And automation is much harder than you think. Your like fucking Asimov saying robots are just around the corner in the 60s, or Clark saying that well have an AI in 1994(when HAL had the computing power of a 98 desktop). Automation and thinking systems are very fucking hard to make.

And what you people don't get is this, humans are greedy. Not just some shadowy "them" at the top, all of us. We will not be satisfied with babbles and free time. We will never be happy, never be satisfied, because greed has burned a hole in our hearts that can never be filled. We could consume the entire mass of the universe and we would still not be sated.

Humanity is about conquest, burning, pillaging, stealing, raping, killing, crushing, and burning. We want it all and more. No system will ever bring about a happy, comfortable, or complacent society. Any system that we make will immediately begin to decay into depravity, filth, and bloodshed. That's the way we like it.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:34:32 2011 No.2425538

>>2425462
>There's a reason he's the one with the locusts, he owns them. He earned them, or else inherited them.

His workers earned them to him, or he inherited them. It is however moderately unfair that he should be granted luxury in excess just because of something while he fucks over everyone else. Especially when he indirectly uses them to fuck over anyone else.
Okay, he earned them trough whatever method, he feels he should be allowed to do whatever he wants with them just because. But by the same reason everyone else could decide that it's okay to murder him and split the money, just because.(they could use some explanation such as because 10 of them have spent 30% of their lives the last decade working entirely for him they are allowed to take 10*10*0,3=30 years away from his current life, rendering him above his estimated life expection, thus dead)

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:36:32 2011 No.2425541

>>2425533
>And what you people don't get is this, humans are greedy. Not just some shadowy "them" at the top, all of us. We will not be satisfied with babbles and free time. We will never be happy, never be satisfied, because greed has burned a hole in our hearts that can never be filled. We could consume the entire mass of the universe and we would still not be sated.

>Humanity is about conquest, burning, pillaging, stealing, raping, killing, crushing, and burning. We want it all and more. No system will ever bring about a happy, comfortable, or complacent society. Any system that we make will immediately begin to decay into depravity, filth, and bloodshed. That's the way we like it.

Actual, physical reality has proven you wrong. Human beings have limited wants. Deal with it.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:37:32 2011 No.2425546

>>2425538
>It is however moderately unfair that he should be granted luxury in excess just because of something while he fucks over everyone else.
If he was fucking them over, they wouldn't be taking his loan. Helping only goes in one direction, and being on the "helping" side of the spectrum is the good thing to do, even if you're optimizing for personal gain.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:38:32 2011 No.2425555
File: 40 KB, 500x340, Lady+GaGa+Poker+Face1.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>mfw I'm rich because I happened to be born in a first world country.
>mfw I'm rich at the expense of poorer workers.
>mfw I'm not particularly clever or original, but still retain upper class economic status.
>mfw I need to do everything in my power to keep the poor poor.
>mfw my life is filled with opportunities only the white upper class have.
>mfw I am going to get richer in the next year without contributing anything to society.
>mfw I don't give a fuck about the poor.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:39:32 2011 No.2425563

>>2425541
This. This "everyone is greedy" bullshit is just ideology conforming to practice. Slave-owners in the American South thought that slave-owning was good, even ethical. There is no limit to how far human ideology can bend to rationalize.

Not all humans are greedy. Stop pretending they are.

>>	None !LoVeEKpnh2 Thu Jan 27 14:39:32 2011 No.2425564 >>2425541 > humans have limited wants Um... in what sense has this been demonstrated, exactly?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:40:32 2011 No.2425573 >>2425546 Did you miss the part about being homeless if you don't agree to shackle yourself in debt?

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:40:32 2011 No.2425574

>>2425533
I don't think that's quite how it works. It doesn't get much more extreme than farming. It used to be 200 people working a farm. Now it's one guy in an air conditioned combine. Maybe a few people at the combine repair shop. A few extra people working on an oil platform. But altogether, fewer people are working to support farming. There's leftover manpower for physics, moviemaking, pizza delivery and other jobs that only come with excess wealth.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:41:32 2011 No.2425579 >275 posts and 24 image replies omitted. Click Reply to view. stay classy /sci/

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:42:32 2011 No.2425583

>>2425541
Historical precedence does not support that conclusion. Every system creates bloodshed and conflict from the most primitive to the most advanced.

A strong species is created out of hardship. The strongest species is forged through hardships of its own making.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:42:32 2011 No.2425589 >>2425574 ... as long as more than just the super-rich share the wealth increase. THAT is the problem with the widening gap.

>>	None !LoVeEKpnh2 Thu Jan 27 14:44:32 2011 No.2425595 >>2425589 > only the super-rich can order pizzas

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:47:32 2011 No.2425626

>>2425595
If the poor are still working rice paddies at pennies a day? Yes. Then only the rich could order pizzas. Seriously.

If there's a general level of poverty, and then only the rich get richer, there isn't an expanded market for higher-value goods. At least SOME of the wealth increase has to go to the general population.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:47:32 2011 No.2425630

>>2425573
1.Homelessness is not the fault of the investor.
2. Interest rates increase or decrease depending on loan demand and available money to loan.
3. Homing options for lower class people have always been a focus of the rich. If the investor had that much money, he'd be building houses that the poorest of the employed could afford.

If you expect someone to work all their lives to get that much money, then give it away without any kind of return, then you're the one that's unfair.

>>	None !LoVeEKpnh2 Thu Jan 27 14:49:32 2011 No.2425640 >>2425626 But the wage gap can widen while the poor's situation improves. So, I just am unclear as to your position.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:49:32 2011 No.2425642 >>2425630 >1.Homelessness is not the fault of the investor. You don't know the history of the industrial revolution. Ever heard that song, "sixteen tons"? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truck_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_bondage

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:50:32 2011 No.2425648
File: 82 KB, 473x658, 1292360832815.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>2425574
That only really works for crop farming. Livestock take far more effort and man power.

>There's leftover manpower for physics, moviemaking, pizza delivery and other jobs that only come with excess wealth.

Well yes the point is that there are always more jobs, not even in the service industry specifically. I don't know if you have a graduate degree but at least in all the geology departments I have ever visited there are far more people that treat science as a tool to get the job done, in contrast to older scientists educated in the 60s and 70s that that it as a world view. Science has become a fun job, and the old fashioned "philosopher scientist is dying. And frankly I couldn't be happier.

Saganesque speeches about "billions of billions" always bored me.

But acquiring more vespine gas is a fucking awesome job. (gas stratigrapher)

Inurdaes !V1sPhobos. Thu Jan 27 14:50:32 2011 No.2425649
File: 91 KB, 450x337, 1262627251614.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>2425630
>If you expect someone to work all their lives to get that much money, then give it away without any kind of return, then you're the one that's unfair.
>mfw half of them screwed over other people and used as much political leverage they could buy to get that much money

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:51:32 2011 No.2425653 >>2425640 Agreed. But the poor (or the general population) MUST get an increase, or the extra wealth of the rich is largely an exercise in financial masturbation. You can't sell luxuries to third-world rice farmers.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:51:32 2011 No.2425654

>>2425626
No, that's wrong. You fucking retard. If you take the labor cost out of everything, the value of human labor relative to product goes UP. Not down. It's a basic economic concept.

If one hour of work previously got you 3/4s of a pizza, and 90% of people are unemployed with the same product production, it follows that one hour of work should get you 7 and a half pizzas. The more human labor is not required, the less work needs to be done.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:52:32 2011 No.2425662 >>2425649 >crime and dishonesty is an argument against capitalism Again, if you don't like robbery then argue against robbery.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:52:32 2011 No.2425663 File: 26 KB, 565x546, 1287736855089.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>2424475 damn. when will all these kids go to bed?

None !LoVeEKpnh2 Thu Jan 27 14:53:32 2011 No.2425665

>>2425653
Sure. But most increases take the form of consumer surplus. Poor people tend to focus on wages, and not on the fact that today's video games cost the same or less as the Atari 2600 games back in the day. They have received enormous benefits. Enormous.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:53:32 2011 No.2425668

>>2425626
And it always does. You can't have the amount of wealth that is flying around in America and have people working in that society for pennies a day. Supply and demand doesn't work that way. There's a supply of wealth too. The richer people are, the more they are willing to pay you to bring them a pizza. This is why America's poor have cell phones and cable tv.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:54:32 2011 No.2425672

>>2425654
>The more human labor is not required, the less work needs to be done.
That's intuitive. But as a cursory examination indicates, people are not paid fairly. Neither the poor, nor the rich, because the rich have undue leverage.

Once people with money can alter the laws of the government that is supposed to regulate finances, the system starts breaking. They step beyond the system and begin to alter the system itself.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:55:32 2011 No.2425680 >>2425662 The current status of CEO salaries, benefits, and severance packages are institutionalized robbery. Even the ones fired for incompetence make millions. Now what?

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:57:32 2011 No.2425688

>>2425640
Yes obviously my feces are more nutritious food if i'm well fed.

But do you really think it's totally okay to wall of that slum area and only offer them a few cents for their efforts. Because hey, you paved the roads in the slum so your buses could go pick up your workers, but they still get paid shit and are locked in misery?

If you are allowed to not give a fuck about your fellow man, blame his situation on himself, then what if you fellow man decides to kill you and take your money, and blame your situation on your lack of empathy?

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:58:32 2011 No.2425696

>>2425663
its definitely science. the vast majority just haven't had the life experiences to talk about any of this stuff in a way that is meaningful to what they would hope to achieve in the future.

Protip: Imagine what kind of world you would want to live in. Now think about the world you live in. Now back to the world you want to live in. Now approach the world you currently live in from the perspective of the world you want to live in. Saves you a lot of bickering and headache by not going down useless rabbit holes.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:58:32 2011 No.2425695

>>2425672
>But as a cursory examination indicates, people are not paid fairly. Neither the poor, nor the rich, because the rich have undue leverage.
There is something here. It leads eventually to argument against monopoly, which we already have laws in place to prevent. Outside cases of monopoly, basic concepts like that hold true. And even in the case of monopoly prices could never go above what the majority of the population could pay if the cost is within the payscale of the general population. That would just be losing profit.

I don't know what system you're thinking of where rich people are just looking at the machines and keeping all the honeybuns to themselves. All of them, mine. YES. YEEEES!

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 14:58:32 2011 No.2425699

>>2425688
>Yes obviously my feces are more nutritious food if i'm well fed.
>implying the poor have to eat the shit of the rich
Actually, that's not too bad an analogy. It fits the ratio of growth in income between the rich and the poor. Although "table scraps" would have been a more tasteful analogy, if less provocative.

>>	Tautoulogic !fcsdUrivQ. Thu Jan 27 14:59:32 2011 No.2425702 >>2425663 Be prepared, here they come, the zeitgeist generation !

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 15:00:32 2011 No.2425710 >>2425695 This system. Our system over the past 25 years. Look at it. >>2424688 >>2424648 >>2424624 >>2424594

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 15:02:32 2011 No.2425714 >>2425696 >>Imagine what kind of world you would want to live in. Now think about the world you live in. Now back to the world you want to live in. I'm on a horse.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 15:02:32 2011 No.2425715 Has anyone here read Snow Crash?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 15:03:32 2011 No.2425722 >>2425714 Well, thats a start! Now is there anything special about your situation of being on a horse? What does your horse do? (These are probing questions;)

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 15:03:32 2011 No.2425720 i would have posted, but i'd get banned with the message of "keep /new/ out of /sci/" so, whats the secret of not getting banned for arguing philosophy here?

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 15:04:32 2011 No.2425729

>>2425654
Right the problem Zeitgeist has is that it thinks money is more that it is. It's a medium of exchange not an abstract invented value. It is set to the availability of resources. Money is just the medium of exchange for products so we don't have to barter all the fucking time.

I'll give you an example of this stupidity. here It says that money is created from nowhere by interest charges. FUUUUUCCKKKK! That is just so fucking retarded. The money that gets paid to cover the interest was from the guy who got the loan. The money he used to pay that interest was given to him as a medium of exchange when he created a product or provided a physical service. The money came from that fucking product, not from the bank. Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck! There is not word I can use to adequately express RAEG I feel at this piece of shit.

This is not hard, it's basic economic production. What I get from this is that because Julian can't understand the complex system of the stock exchange and investment banking where there are complex infighting between rational actors, he thinks that the entire system is fake or something. You can't model the stock market? Join the fucking club Jules nobody can, it's the one place in the world where Chaos Theory is actually descriptive of the situation, since it is composed of rational actors without outside destructive interference, unlike what you'd get if you used Chaos Theory to say describe wave propagation on the open ocean where there is destructive interference.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 15:05:32 2011 No.2425731 >>2425720 philosophy is science, you will just get trolled for it. just have plenty of cards in your deck.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 15:05:32 2011 No.2425732 File: 32 KB, 492x378, e1135016-a1b1-4aa5-8127-6ca1bc4693c9.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>2425722

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 15:05:32 2011 No.2425734

>>2425710
Again, it's irrelevant. Stop being so envious. Either:
1. A rich person uses wealth for a lot of shit he wants done. Pays out money for labor and labor cost for the shit he wants.
2.A rich person invests. Products become cheaper and more efficient, companies grow and hire more people.
3. A rich person puts money in the bank. More money is available for loaning and interest rates go down, increasing economic expansion and decreasing the debt of Joe Schmoe.
4. Rich person puts money under his mattress. Inflation goes down due to his unspent riches.
5. Rich person burns the money. He goes back to working and providing, inflation goes down.

Last two are worst case, but you can see how individual wealth invariably results in economic prosperity. There are social pressures at play often times, but economic forces are universally stronger than social pressures.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 15:07:32 2011 No.2425741 >>2425720 You said a dirty word. not sure which one. Avoid anything racial or related to those boards which shall not be named.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 15:08:32 2011 No.2425749 >>2425729 Julian? Who's Julian?

>>	Tautoulogic !fcsdUrivQ. Thu Jan 27 15:08:32 2011 No.2425753 File: 959 KB, 1020x768, blue.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>2425731 Why did i get a 30 day ban then for mentioning the philosophy of mysticism ??? "religious troll" is said.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 15:09:32 2011 No.2425754 >>2425734 This still doesn't provide justification for why a rich person should exist to begin with. All of those things are perfectly possible with a much narrower income gap.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 15:10:32 2011 No.2425760

>>2425734
The problem is the opportunity cost of allowing a small group to hoard wealth. You've lost the opportunity to have a larger middle class, which would have happened if he increased wages in his factories instead of giving himself a fat bonus. We would have been better off as a society if he had. So would he, in the long run.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 15:11:32 2011 No.2425765 >>2425754 It's not a matter of "should" or "shouldn't". Rich people are a direct result of personal property.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 15:11:32 2011 No.2425772 >>2425753 this>>2424995 have fun with your mysticism

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 15:12:32 2011 No.2425774 >>2425760 THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS HOARDING WEALTH HOARDING WEALTH IS NOT SOMETHING ANY RICH PERSON DOES BECAUSE IT IS STUPID

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 15:15:32 2011 No.2425791

We have hit the autosage. I still can't believe you faggots can't understand basic principles of economic growth, investment, loans, supply and demand, and personal worth. Enjoy your world view where everyone's a bunch of spidermonkey's grasping for a bunch of banana's held out of their reach by the big bad ape.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 15:16:32 2011 No.2425797

>>2425741
used 4 dirty words the first time, and i can tell you which ones they are, but apparently the secret rule is in force, so i won't. haven't used them for the other two bans.

>>2425731
i know that philosophy is science. in detail, it was on economics, JUST LIKE THIS THREAD. but apparently it didn't involve answering any homework, so it resulted in my ban. the funny thing is some pedo was posting hc cp, and he didn't get banned. which makes sense.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 15:16:32 2011 No.2425799 >>2425774 Do I need to show you those graphs ITT again? If you think another term is in order, propose one, but they rich sure are taking all the increases in corporate profits for themselves.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 15:17:32 2011 No.2425805 >>2425791 >implying the rich don't want wage slaves Sure thing, buddy. History has shown that they will get away with anything they can.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 15:19:32 2011 No.2425817 >>2425774 Rich person buys a luxury yacht. Yacht builders get paid. Yacht builders spend their money renting apartments from rich person. Rich person gets paid...

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 15:22:32 2011 No.2425840 >>2425817 And then, once the rich basically own everything, you've got the truck system and debt bondage. >>2425642 The problem, of course, is collusion among the rich and a lack of competition.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 15:25:32 2011 No.2425852

>>2425799
Those graphs show that the rich have access to more money than everyone else. But where the fuck is that money? It's not in the rich guy's pocket, that's for sure. It's in the building materials for a new house, it's in research for a new kind of plastic, it's in the new machines in the Coke plant that will increase production enough to lower costs by 4 cents.

Get the "rich guy sitting on a pile of money" image out of your head.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 15:26:32 2011 No.2425862

>>2425852
> It's in the building materials for a new house, it's in research for a new kind of plastic, it's in the new machines in the Coke plant that will increase production enough to lower costs by 4 cents.
Just because the money is invested doesn't mean it's not his. He owns the new house, he owns the new plastic, he own the new Coke plant. And he gets richer and richer and richer.

We're just lucky the poor aren't getting any poorer.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 15:28:32 2011 No.2425871

>>2425862
>He owns the new house, he owns the new plastic, he own the new Coke plant. And he gets richer and richer and richer.
AND WHERE DOES THAT MONEY GO

OH NO, NOT MORE HOUSING. YOU EVIL EVIL MAN. DECREASING HOUSING PRICES BY INCREASING AVAILABLE OPTIONS? YOU'VE GOT A VICE GRIP ON THE LOWER CLASS!!

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 15:29:32 2011 No.2425875 >>2425871 Take a look at the subprime crisis and say that again. It's debt slavery.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 15:30:32 2011 No.2425883 >>2425875 Except the subprime debt slavery was perpetuated by persuasion and deception, rather than overt use of leverage. But yeah.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 15:31:32 2011 No.2425888 >>2425871 A stronger middle class would contribute more to the progress of the economy than a richer upper class, dollar for dollar.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 15:31:32 2011 No.2425889

>>2425875
What? People defaulting because they can't pay the loans they took out is debt slavery? It was the result of a series of governmental and individual fuckups, not a direct result of capitalism.

Hurr durr, look what happened with russia! Every slightly socialist system is bad, hurrr durrr durr durr durr!

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 15:33:32 2011 No.2425898 >>2425888 >Let's say some words Ok. I think if people had more money people would have more money. Your argument is invalid!

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 15:38:32 2011 No.2425923

>>2425898
>implying your argument is any better

Let's take an extreme example. One land baron who has a bunch of rice-paddy farming serfs. He sells all the produce on the market, and pays the serfs as little as he can without them looking for work elsewhere.

Now one year there is a bumper crop. imagine he does one of two things: He effectively doubles their wages that year so they can do what they want with the extra, or he takes that same money as a bonus. Which one will better benefit the standard of living and progress of the society?

The responses will reveal a lot.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 15:40:32 2011 No.2425940

>>2425889
>this

Pure Capitalism would fuck up in two years. Actual socialism fucks up so quick that it has never even gotten off the ground.

Which is why the entire world leans capitalist. We are all mixed economies because that is what works.

Socialist systems work rarely but they can work. For example the Military Industrial Complex is essentially a socialist institution. Since the profits are small and it has basically become a wing of the government, with the CEOs being appointed officials. It's entire purpose is to give it's nation the best weapons it can domestically create and keep it's weapon designs a state secret as long as possible. And it works. Healthcare, well it depends on what type. For all Europe's bitching their waits for treatment are ridiculous, and it can only afford it since the US practically subsidizes NATO(paying 75 percent of it's costs). Without that Europe couldn't afford to spend as much since it would have spend more to maintain it's weapons. Healthcare for work related injuries seems like a cheaper option with less opportunity for abuse and fraud since there would be a record of chronic or acute injury at the job.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 15:44:32 2011 No.2425964

>>2425923
I don't have nearly enough information to make a conclusion. Due to the implications you made, such as "serfs", I would say that this is an undeveloped economic system without very efficient investment. However, I'd also say that historically in the distant past those without much money either saved it religiously or spent it near instantly.

A system like that doesn't have any room for real development. Give it to the serfs and I guess quality of living goes up a bit due to the money's effects on their lives. The question isn't remotely relevant or good, though.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 15:47:32 2011 No.2425982

>>2425964
Oh, and I'd have to add that the baron still shouldn't give the money to the serfs unless his motives are humanitarian, as in all likelihood if he's intelligent he'll "invest" it in whatever primitive way he can, probably eventually increasing food production significantly and reducing hunger. The serfs will contribute to that to some degree too with their increased food purchases, but not with as dramatic of an effect.

Again, depending on just how primitive the economy is.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 15:48:32 2011 No.2425984 >>2425964 Fine. Maybe you could help me find a more apt example without sacrificing clarity?

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 15:51:32 2011 No.2426005

"capitalism" isn't just a snapshot of a middle class shopkeeper providing quality goods at reasonable prices to his neighbors, and then reinvesting some of his profits into his brother-in-laws business to make a little more money. that is just private business. private business has gone on for MILLENIA, long before any fairytale idea of "capitalism".

capitalism is a corporation cornering a market, and then getting the rights to a monopoly by buying de facto or de jure legal protection by the government.

money is power. always. and as you might guess, lobbyists (who are just the mouthpieces of money) write our laws and hand them to congressmen to enact. every day.

allowing a massive income inequality to exist not only causes a plethora of social problems within society, but it also allows the people with the most money to pass all the laws and write their own tax bills, regardless of how it affects the majority of the population.

socialism doesn't necessitate that no one can be wealthy. it just limits how wealthy any one person can be by the use of a progressive income tax.

notice that the US economy strong from the 1940s until the 1980s, when the highest income tax bracket paid between 65-75% income tax. notice that the US middle class ROSE during this time period, along with productivity and real wages.

we've been cutting the tax rates of the top 2% since 1980, and all we've seen is an increase in income inequality, a stagnant-to-dropping living wage, a drop in the middle class, and rising deficits and an out-of-control debt that is set to explode once medicare/medicaid and social security start paying out the baby boomers.

please, lets not pretend that by giving the top 2% of income earners more money that it is going to trickle down. we don't have to rely on philosophy to know this doesn't work. just look at what has happened to this country over the past 30 years.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 15:51:32 2011 No.2426006

>>2425923
Serfs are a long term investment idiot, you drop their tithe when they don't make enough to breed and raise it slightly when they do. Always make sure your self doesn't starve, he cannot work the field if he is dead. His survival and birthrate is what matters. Didn't you take Feudal Lordship 303 in Westminster?

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 15:55:32 2011 No.2426033

>>2425984
It is a little difficult because of how complex modern economies are. I just tried, but it's difficult because what matters most is:

1.What the boss does with the money
2.What the workers would do with the money
3.The efficiency of each of those investments/expenditures and how they affect production

Economic growth is an exponential thing. It's hard to do in a word problem.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 16:00:32 2011 No.2426062

>>2426005
It doesn't "trickle down". We're already sharing in all of it. "Owning" money just means that they have the right to decide how much of the money they get to waste on stupid shit(and therefore hand over to someone else) but it's their right to waste it if they'd like.

The alternative is discontinuing personal ownership, getting rid of any incentive to succeed and promote growth, and decreasing overall prosperity over time.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 16:02:32 2011 No.2426072

>65-75% income tax

>They never had it that high except in WW2 to recoup government money spent on war material. In the 70s was never above 30%.

>lets not pretend that by giving the top 2% of income earners more money that it is going to trickle down
It was a theory that worked on paper, much like socialism. But it ultimately did not work out. The money is supposed to be directly invested, but 15% of that income is just shuffelled around and causes bubbles through speculation. So just raise the tax on the upper 10% of the brackets by 5%, and the upper 2% by 15%. Then drop the corporate taxes by 2%, making it almost zero. That will encourage direct investment into the corporations in the form of equipment and personnel but less speculation.

Fairness, equality, orportunity, justice: these are hollow phrases with no meaning. I only care about what works. Laize Faire just doesn't work as well as the economic theory said, big deal. But if you want some egalitarian society fuck yourself with a chainsaw covered in tabasco sauce.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 16:04:32 2011 No.2426084 >>2426072 /clap Now we just need honest enforcement and attempts to close loopholes and that's a pretty good proposition. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu5B-2LoC4s

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 16:05:32 2011 No.2426090

>>2426062
no, the alternative is what the US had before 1980.

a higher income tax, which allowed rich people to remain rich, just not incredibly ultra rich.

for better or worse, the economy before 1980 was somewhat taking care of itself. once we decided that rich people should get richer is when deficits and national debt started to double and triple every 6-8 years.

you do not have to discontinue personal ownership to have a higher income tax rate.

why do people think socialism (a mid point between capitalism and communism) has anything to do with removing rights of personal property, or of creating wealth.

it just limits the large income inequality that is currently tearing this country apart.

>>2426072
who is arguing for an "egalitarian" society? all i want is a society that isn't coming apart at the seams, all for the benefit of the richest 2% of the population.

people seriously need to get better reading comprehension, and stop attacking people that they think they might, possibly disagree with

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 16:06:32 2011 No.2426097

>>2426072
This. Reasonable, with decent arguments that it would be effective. A more progressive tax on individual income, with fewer burdens on actual businesses.

I approve. We've handed large recent tax breaks to the rich for too long. A more moderately progressive tax is a better option.

None !LoVeEKpnh2 Thu Jan 27 16:09:32 2011 No.2426115

>>2426072
Trickle down economics doesn't even work on paper, sorry.

If trickle down economics worked, it would work in a situation where there was excess demand but not enough supply. The market already handles that situation, though: prices rise, and therefore profits rise, and expansion can now happen thanks to profits. There's no need to gift the wealthy.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 16:12:32 2011 No.2426126 >>2426090 Increasing the progressive tax code on the higher end of the spectrum isn't anything new. Go ahead. Herpa derpa 100% tax bracket above x dollars hurr durr is stupid, though.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 16:13:32 2011 No.2426138 >>2426115 No one's gifting the wealthy. What the fuck. Do you even read what you type while you type it?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 16:13:32 2011 No.2426139 >>2426126 who said 100% tax bracket?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 16:14:32 2011 No.2426140 >>2426126 >Herpa derpa 100% tax bracket above x dollars hurr durr is stupid, though. Why? It's just a more radically progressive tax.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 16:15:32 2011 No.2426148 >>2426138 >No one's gifting the wealthy. OH GEE, I GUESS THE BUSH TAX BREAKS FOR THE RICH THAT CONGRESS ISN'T WILLING TO LET LAPSE ARE JUST IN MY IMAGINATION

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 16:15:32 2011 No.2426149 >>2426139 It was the idea behind the argument before people started having a blatant inability to understand anything at all, among some other "Steal from the rich and give to the needy" arguments. Then it went from arguments to explanations.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 16:15:32 2011 No.2426153 File: 326 KB, 1296x976, terrifyingbat.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] that cage totally wouldn't work, you could just choose another spot to launch out of.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 16:17:32 2011 No.2426158 >>2426140 Because there's a difference between mitigating incentive and removing it. >>2426148 >implying that is what we're talking about

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 16:18:32 2011 No.2426164 >>2426158 >implying we aren't discussing a more progressive tax on the rich

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 16:19:32 2011 No.2426173 >>2426153 >saging the autosaged Enjoying your 2 minute timer with no reward, friend?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 16:19:32 2011 No.2426177 >>2426158 No, removing incentive is when you give everyone a fixed income. Not when you restrict income inequality to some maximum.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 16:20:32 2011 No.2426183 >>2426164 >IMPLYING THE BUSH TAX BREAKS ARE AN EXAMPLE OF A MORE PROGRESSIVE TAX ON THE RICH At what point did you get the concepts switched, exactly?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 16:21:32 2011 No.2426191 >>2426177 CEO makes x dollars base. He'll make x+y dollars if the company succeeds. X is the cut off point for 100% tax. CEO drinks tea.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 16:21:32 2011 No.2426192 >>2426183 I was citing it as an example of "gifting the rich". A case where tax WAS more progressive, then we changed it (gift to the rich), and now it needs to go back.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 16:21:32 2011 No.2426194

>>2426149
well, you quoted me, so thats why i asked.

i'm not talking about taxing anyone at 100%, or even at pre-1980 levels.

but the trickle-down theory doesn't work. even Bush I named it "voodoo economics".

I just get tired of hearing how the top 2% needs more money, or everyone else will be out of a job. As if the top 2% actually invest that money into anything that creates jobs, rather than just buying stocks so they can get by paying 15% capital gains taxes.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 16:22:32 2011 No.2426198 >>2426192 And you responded to my correction of someone else on exactly the opposite. A "whoops" is fine, too.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 16:24:32 2011 No.2426216 >>2426198 Well, I've traced my posts back, and I don't see a reason to say "whoops" yet. Have you done the same? Regardless, I think we understand each other, and that we agree.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 16:26:32 2011 No.2426231

>>2426194
Eh. Was with you until you suggested that investments don't directly contribute to economic growth. Cool story, bro.

It's a matter of incentivization. Is investment discouraged too much at the current tax code? I don't think so. Would investment still be about as widespread at a harsher tax code? Probably. Would the money taken from the rich go to better use in the government than in investments? I don't know.

But if you somehow think that the wealth of rich people doesn't directly result in prosperity just like everyone else's then you're living in a far off "I don't understand" land.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 16:28:32 2011 No.2426237 >>2426216 I think it's !LoVeEKpnh2. I blame him. Sorry, I rude bro.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 16:28:32 2011 No.2426242

>>2426231
>Would the money taken from the rich go to better use in the government than in investments? I don't know.
That's my main point of internal debate.

Who is more benevolent and efficient in their use of funds? The whole thing is just a resource allocation and decision-making problem.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 16:35:32 2011 No.2426258

>>2426231
why is the reading comprehension level so low on /sci/? is it because words are open to interpretation, where formulas and equations are not?

I never said that wealth doesn't get redistributed. What I said was, the rich don't need MORE MONEY (key phrase, by the way).

I know if you're looking to argue with someone it is easy to just jump on anything that you think might be looking at you funny, but my point is that the trickle-down theory argues that if you give the top 2% more money, they'll invest more of it.

Ultimately, if you believe that giving the top 2% of the population more money will result in more investment and creation of wealth, then you DO believe that trickle-down works.

If you're like everyone else who is rooted in reality, you'll realize that giving the top 2% more and more tax cuts does not inherently create more investment, wealth production and societal benefits to everyone else.

go read up on how capital gains taxes work. this is where the wealthy 2% put a large part of their increasing tax cuts. not investment that does anything for industry, but investment that allows them to pay 15% tax on an INFINITE amount of income derived from capital.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 16:47:32 2011 No.2426345

>>2426258
Well technically are investing some of it, but 15% is being invested in shit speculative stocks and housing.

It's not about taking away what they don't need, it's about taking away that which is not being used and is actually fucking things up a little until the old regulatory systems start to catch up to the more digital exchange style we have today. Same thing happened in the 20s, they had a new faster banking system that allowed easier exchange but also had more leeway for fuck ups. This time they jumped on the problem and gave the banks loans and froze eh market so it would not collapse. Regulation will catch up until some new breakthrough makes trade easier than the regulation is designed for and it will happen again. This will occor every 100 years or so at least.

And I'll take this opportunity to give Zeitgeist another finger, bailouts are not giving away money. They are loans, the government that gave that loan now has a sword to hold over that particular banks head to halt speculation. If the lazy asses at the federal reserve bother to do it.

Anonymous Thu Jan 27 16:52:32 2011 No.2426382

>>2426345
15% is the amount of tax you pay on capital gains. it has nothing to do with the amount of tax cuts invested into any particular area.

i'm sure there are people who take all of their tax cuts and invest it in areas that help increase growth. there may be people who take their tax breaks and give it to the poor. but assuming that by giving the top 2% more tax cuts is going to create more growth and jobs is just a religion.

i don't believe that zeitgeist is the answer, but i do like that they raise questions that get people to stop assuming that corporate capitalism is the same thing as freedom and democracy. socialism as practiced in western europe, and east asia has some good qualities to it. capitalism, when it is kept in check and under control also has some good qualities.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 16:59:32 2011 No.2426430 >>2426382 15% is the average investment in speculative stocks after taxes for the average member of the upper 2% of the income brackets. Hence the interest in taxing that about, since the money doesn't do much.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jan 27 17:03:32 2011 No.2426451 Zeitgeisters: U MAD BRO?

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/sci/ - Science & Math