Dick Lamm: “How To Destroy America”

[Artful D0dger]

This has been the MO with Marxists since after WW2, which went into hyper drive after the fall of the Soviet Union.

All their stupid social theories fell apart after WW1 and WW2 when the workers did not "rise up against the oppressors" but were in fact very patriotic towards their countries. So, they had to revise their theory- "Revolution in one nation" wasn't a possibility. It would only work if it were the entire world. Therefore they started trying to deconstruct the most basic building blocks of identity and society thinking that THIS would finally usher in the glorious "revolution" they all just KNOW we're destined for.

The writing is on the wall.

 

[Ricter]

Marx was keenly aware of the problems of inequality, in his time he was seeing the effects of unregulated capitalism at its worst. While he read extraordinarily widely, and for decades before composing his work, he did not have the science available to him that we do today (that's not to say that science is finished on the matter). Thus, he drew heavily on history, histiorigraphy, and economics to posit a structural, historical determinism. Behavioral anthropology, psychology, neurobiology, all still in their infancy or non-existent in his time. The social sciences have moved on so far since Marx that his critique of capitalist society's problems bears little to no resemblance to modern critiques. Still, the problems remain and draw our attention.

 

[jem]

richer... i mean ricter

If you worked for 20 years to acquire a house, a business and some cash and another guy lived on the govt dole surfing and playing golf...

Would you agree you should share the fruit of your labor and give away half of what you owe to the surfer?

Hell you might be fat bald pasty and have bad vision from looking at your computer.

the only way you could get a date is with the money and security you just had to give away.

Is he going to share his women with you?

forced giving of the fruits of your labor... is un natural. I do not understand why you think you could set up a system where people will work hard for others.

I do not even blame the surfer type. As you get older you realize time is the most important asset. Pissing it away on work sucks.

it is sinful to take a hardworking persons time and give it to someone who kept all theirs.

 

[Ricter]

Quote from jem:

richer... i mean ricter

If you worked for 20 years to acquire a house, a business and some cash and another guy lived on the govt dole surfing and playing golf...

Would you agree you should share the fruit of your labor and give away half of what you owe to the surfer?

Hell you might be fat bald pasty and have bad vision from looking at your computer.

the only way you could get a date is with the money and security you just had to give away.

Is he going to share his women with you?

forced giving of the fruits of your labor... is un natural. I do not understand why you think you could set up a system where people will work hard for others.

I do not even blame the surfer type. As you get older you realize time is the most important asset. Pissing it away on work sucks.

it is sinful to take a hardworking persons time and give it to someone who kept all theirs.

I'm not interested in taking away wealth from hardworking, laboring individuals. That's already happening and I don't think they have much left. Lately I've begun to think it's far better to not need to redistribute wealth, peacefully or otherwise, in the first place. Without looking intently at the society's around who are doing this better than we are, my gut alone tells me that a new social normal of trust and commitment would have to be established, ie. there has to be buy-in. The wide, public reaction to a debt ceiling deal that does not include revenue increases on the wealthy tells me that one of those rare times in American history is back. Somehow or another we have got to get the 1%'rs out of government. They do what comes natural to themselves (to all of us), but they do it well (if they have not merely inherited their leverage), and they're robbing us.

 

[377OHMS]

Quote from Ricter:

Best way to destroy any group (America included). First, populate it with primates, particularly apes, which almost alone in the animal kingdom have a sense of fairness. Second, begin dividing the group into those with more stuff, and those with less stuff (rationalize this process any way you like, policy, laissez faire, it's irrelevant to the outcome). Finally, make the division glaringly obvious.

It has been my experience that dogs have a sense of fairness. I have 3 dogs. Try just petting one and see what happens.

 

[Ricter]

Quote from 377OHMS:

It has been my experience that dogs have a sense of fairness. I have 3 dogs. Try just petting one and see what happens.

Lol, fair enough. Myself, I had to give up on pets, I get attached.

I don't want to argue about it, but tell me, if you went around and pet all three dogs, but one dog ended up getting six pats and the other two got two pats each, would those two latter dogs make much fuss about it? Humans are devilishly good at detecting this kind of thing. They used to call it "cheater detection".

 

[Artful D0dger]

Ahh, trust and commitment. Well, allow me to introduce you to Harvard's study on the downsides of diversity:

" the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings."

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/the_downside_of_diversity/

Ricter, meet reality; reality, this is Ricter. I think you two have a lot to talk about....

P.S.: A little hint on how to get the 1%ers out of government: Scale down the scope and size of government. Once you accept the reality that the nature of power is to corrupt, you realize that reducing what government can do is the only way to get them out of it...

Quote from Ricter:

I'm not interested in taking away wealth from hardworking, laboring individuals. That's already happening and I don't think they have much left. Lately I've begun to think it's far better to not need to redistribute wealth, peacefully or otherwise, in the first place. Without looking intently at the society's around who are doing this better than we are, my gut alone tells me that a new social normal of trust and commitment would have to be established, ie. there has to be buy-in. The wide, public reaction to a debt ceiling deal that does not include revenue increases on the wealthy tells me that one of those rare times in American history is back. Somehow or another we have got to get the 1%'rs out of government. They do what comes natural to themselves (to all of us), but they do it well (if they have not merely inherited their leverage), and they're robbing us.