I began this link to provoke the members of this forum; to analyze their responses and see if any of the members have any depth to the reasons for their lives. In my opnion capitalism is great and terrible. Great because an open-minded government (a democracy) allows for the evolution of art and science, or scientific art. I love the human race but people are so short sighted and emotionally imature that they see material posessions as the answer to life. Living for material goods is in my opinion an aesthetically ugly idea. Only people with pathetic generic, and tv gleaned personalities, would be so and are so, wrong. Of course, right and wrong are opinions, and mine are quite calculated. For example, do you express yourself creatively through the material goods you purchased at stores? Do you think you are special because your car is a better model and is silver? My problem with capitalism is this. Becuase of this kind of short sighted social creative consumerism of cool, banal, and sheep like, the world is being environmentally trashed to the point that people are dying from polution. In order for the human race to succeed it must change its ways. This cousmerism, or irrational frenzy must be corrected. We will not evolve and may actually extinguish the human race if we continue to use as we do today. A socialistic type of capitalism is in the future because of man's dispicable breeding habits and irresponsibilty towards maintaining our precious resource, earth. With earth we have possibly millions of years to evolve and travel the universe without earth, all the amazing technolies, or forms of art, will not come to fruition. Maybe I'm less of a hypocrit because at least I admit my hypocrisy. One of my life goals is for financial power. Money spent on intelligent ideas is far more resonant than money spent on emotionally primitive ideas such as finally impressing your friends with the ownership of a fine automobile. I plan to beat big business corruption through big business. I plan to buy an army of environmental lawers and crush the polluters through class action law suits advertised through every form of media. Money is power, and in my hands money will change capitalism into being more productive. The end. Those aren't your thoughts, they were created by someone else, think for yourself.
Chasinfla wrote: "capitalism has nothing to do with what one 'lives for.' that is a moral question. capitalism depends on the moral quality of citizens to function properly, but it does not answer moral questions. an immoral people will destroy themselves and others any ism (Marx saw this, and sought to erode the morality in order to bring about command economies), including capitalism. but a moral people will be able to raise the standard of living far and wide through adherence to capitalism. every political system depends on capitalism, whether it acknowledges it or not. capitalism is as proper for human beings as breathing." these are reasonable statements but are insidious as well. Insidious because it seems that these statements don't fully, or dramatically enough, acknowlege the problems with capitalism. Capitalism is obviously a natural social system because it exists. But capitalism is so much more dangerous than communisn and nazism because it is so natural and seems right. Because capitalism seems correct, it is widespread, and because the system isn't very articulated, in the ways of waste and pollution control, it is the most dangerous system ever. Capitalism, the act of free trade and consumption, is very dangerous when the people are immoral (though I dislike the word immoral). In the US capitalism we have immorality in the way that we are wasteful. Waste goes against the logic of productivity. Keeping waste at a minimum is in the wise capitalists' best interest. Waste managment, so to speak, is a necessity that as of now, hasn't been taken care of. Also, the first line above, that capitalism has nothing to do with what one lives for, may be short sighted. I don't want to offend you because I think we mostly agree. May I observe to you that religion hugely dictated the earliest forms of the actions of capitalism. Today capitalism dictates how you think and breath and everything else in between. You probably cannot escape the affectation of capitalism. You don't realize how many of your thoughts are capitalistic. You are brainwashed, at least to a certain extent, as we all are. Please note that god is written your dollar bill.
rowenwood- first of all good luck getting an army of environmental lawyers to fight big business. Try to get through state judges that want to be re-elected or appointed to higher office. It is the big business that they must suck up to. It is hard to find a truly just judge. They are as biased as the next. Luckily most of the time they try to do their best because most of the time they do not see their self interest touched. But they do with environmental cases because they are so political. Second- waste and unnecessary consumption of the enviorment comes from mispricing. That is the flaw with letting price dictate allocation. Information is not always well represented by price. The waste problem is illustrated in the classic econ question what should cost more water or champagne ---until water is properly priced, the enviorment will be misused.
rowenwood- you are talking to a person who went to law school and surfed. Consequently wanted to be an enviornmental lawyer who made a difference. I met the scientists at scripps, met the lawyers who worked on both sides of the fence and brought actions on behalf of a just organization. The organizations founder took public transportation, Lived in a small house, inherited money, and gave half to unicef and half to fight to keep parts of San Diego Bay and the area around it clean. I brought a clear winner on his behalf. I watched how the civil procedure laws of the court house were manipulated so that my case was taken away from a sympathetic judge to a judge that was trying to become a Federal judge. I showed up at the Summary Judgment motion which was tentatively against my client. I illustrated to a judge (similar last name to mine) why my clients side had the law, had the facts and had the equites on its side. There were a lot of people in the court room She said she would rethink it. Needless to say as soon as the court was in recess her clerk called my offcie with the bad news. I watched this happen a few times. I saw how disingenuous most of the groups on both sides of the issues were and decided it was not worth working for peanuts to fight for causes that had very little chance of winning. You may call that trite I call it what I did for a few years. I realize you are a clown so again I wish you good luck. I was merely trying to see if you had an anwwer for the mispricing of the environment. Apparently you would rather fancy yourself a jet owning capitalist than respond to a difficult issue
I don't at all care about how jem failed in court or what not, and in response to the 12 year old France comment, there are just as many idiots there as here in gorgeous Marin County, California. To jem, I know how difficult it is to obtain a law degree and so I can respect you for that and for being an environmental lawer, but don't be sad that you lost. What you need is a visioonary, a person with the audacity to preach corny catch phrases to an audience that is only slightly less informed. You need a visionary because you seem incapable of creativity. I have visonary thoughts, subversive, far left, whatever you wish to call them. In fact I'm considering sending my ideas to Adbusters magazine (this all makes sense for you now doesn't it). No, I'm not in complete agreement with adbusters or anyone I've ever met. And you wonder why I write such serious ideas with a nonchalance. Maybe it's because I think I'm enlightened because I can create amazing pieces of art, or maybe I just haven't met a single person with as original thoughts as my own. Or maybe I think everyone is full of shit, emotionally and philosophically immature. The letter you wrote doesn't tell of an allmighty intellectual. It describes a person who has tried and failed and somewhat given up but may return. I don't know what the fuck you are. If and when I am a sucessful intellectual I certainly will not waste my time conversing via chat rooms to other dorks about ideas written years ago and better described in books. Or maybe I would use a chat room but not as much as I am currently. Anyway what I think I want to express is that you're a fucking liar or if you do have a law degree why the fuck are even engaging an undergradute art student, with a ten thousand dollar bank account, in this arguement about what? Because fuck your degree and life, you may know more than me about economics but that advantage will end. The response you gave me about judges is shit. With the proper funding, and then advertising, I could obtain 100,000 signatures in the bay area alone, for a class action law suit. Maybe this suit will taget car manufactures for creating cars that pollute the air which in turn is proven to cause lung cancer which is a breach of my constitutional fucking rights man. Tell me that a judge would deny the hearing of my case if I have 10,000 signatures and a television ad. So the cable channels won't air my piece. I'll put up bilboards and arrange rallys. This is a waste of my time. No, I don't know much about infaltion or mispricing but surely I will know it eventually as I'm in pursuit of omniscience. What I do know is that the amount of philosophical and emotional stupidity overwhelms me to a state of violent disgust, which in turn incites my will for the achievement of my goals. I thank you for this. You, being such an educated man, must know that many of the non-clown and serious sentences you've written me are completely worthless. Even with all the economics information, or information about the world, I would geuss that you will still fail because you analyze life incorrectly. Is this letter vehement, I'm writing what I believe to be accurate. I don't intend to hurt your feelings, but to inspire you to change and continue being an environmental lawer if you actually are lawyer.
Can you explain what is so dangerous about two people voluntarily deciding to exchange goods and services with each other, increasing the wealth of both themselves and society in the process? If you think that's more dangerous than the 150 million civilians who were killed by their own authoritarian governments (that figure does *not* include deaths from warfare) in the 20th century, then you have a strange sense of priorities. People in advanced societies now live 70-80 years on average instead of the 20 that was the norm in developing countries in 1900. Most countries in the world are now, at least in theory, democratic. One idea is responsible for that, and it isn't socialism, environmentalism, spiritualism, or anything else - it's the idea that you describe as more dangerous than all of them.
my belief is that capitalism is more dangerous than communism and nazism combined (and if 150,000,000 were multiplied by four to represent the dead) because capitalism awry, which is mass pollution, starves millions, infuriates millions to war, and has the possibilties of lasting in this illogical manner for centuries more, and then ending when the environment collapses killing us all. Besides the fact that all forests are parks. And even the frogs are dying in large numbers from pesticide run off. Don't you care about the flowers and birds? Do you know the story of the passenger pigeon?
Your main problem will arise when you try to think of a non-capitalist system that does not require the systematic infringement of the rights of individuals. Several hundred years worth of Europe and America's best intellectuals have tried and failed to come up with one, and whilst it's possible that you may be the exception, the odds are against it.