US Politics

[Christian Graus]

Oh, this idiocy ?" I thought you had a real opinion. I am free of drivel like this, it doesn't occur in the public arena at home.

Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista.

[Stan Shannon]

Christian Graus wrote:

I am free of drivel like this, it doesn't occur in the public arena at home.

My original point precisely.

Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

[Christian Graus]

*grin* well, touche, assuming that your paranoia has some basis in fact, then we are all indeed enslaved to the idea that society should not prey on it's weakest members.

Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista.

[Stan Shannon]

Christian Graus wrote:

*grin* well, touche, assuming that your paranoia has some basis in fact, then we are all indeed enslaved to the idea that society should not prey on it's weakest members.

Which merely means those weakest members become little more than political chattel, rather than free, self reliant, productive individuals.

Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

[Christian Graus]

we've discussed this before. The ignorance you display, the lack of ability to consider the lot of people unlike you, is quite breathtaking.

Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista.

[Stan Shannon]

Christian Graus wrote:

The ignorance you display, the lack of ability to consider the lot of people unlike you, is quite breathtaking.

The ignorance is on your side. The vast majority of people are not "unlike me". You have no confidence that the common man is capable of freedom and responsibility, I do. You think you belong to some kind of exclusive elite club of capable human beings, I don't.

Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

[Christian Graus]

Stan Shannon wrote:

You have no confidence that the common man is capable of freedom and responsibility

That's not true. I don't believe that the average person is in a position of offering skilled labour to employers, in other words, in a position of power to negotiate the sort of things you take for granted as having come through your hard work. I am sure that everyone is capable of freedom, but there are plenty of people as enslaved today as if they were actually slaves, and have opportunity for advancement equally closed to them.

Stan Shannon wrote:

You think you belong to some kind of exclusive elite club of capable human beings, I don't.

The suggestion that people work at WalMart because they are smart enough to code, but simply too lazy to bother, is not non-elitist. It's just dumb.

Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista.

[BoneSoft]

I didn't guarantee publication either.

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[Stan Shannon]

Christian Graus wrote:

I don't believe that the average person is in a position of offering skilled labour to employers, in other words, in a position of power to negotiate the sort of things you take for granted as having come through your hard work. I am sure that everyone is capable of freedom, but there are plenty of people as enslaved today as if they were actually slaves, and have opportunity for advancement equally closed to them.

A situation that only becomes worse as the state interfers with economic growth by trying to artificially ameliorate economic inequities. When the economy is free to grow naturally, the opportunities for each individual to freely achieve their own level of success in their own way is optimized. A free economy is the source of all true freedom.

Christian Graus wrote:

The suggestion that people work at WalMart because they are smart enough to code, but simply too lazy to bother, is not non-elitist. It's just dumb.

I think people work at walmart because it provides them with a standard of living with which they are comfortable, or it is a temporary necessity as they prepare themselves for a better standard of living. The suggestion that wal-mart employees are slaves it what is dumb. Slavery is not a condition of being required to perform work that might profit someone else more than it does you, it is a condition of not being allowed to take responsibility for your own welfare. When those same wal-mart employees become dependent upon the state then they are slaves, and so are those of us forced by the state to provide for them.

Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

[Christian Graus]

Stan Shannon wrote:

A situation that only becomes worse as the state interfers with economic growth by trying to artificially ameliorate economic inequities

Because people get smarter through starvation ?

Stan Shannon wrote:

When the economy is free to grow naturally, the opportunities for each individual to freely achieve their own level of success in their own way is optimized

Correct. That's my point. The dumbest, weakest people are far more likely to only reach their level of success ( starvation ), in a society that leaves them to it. And, people who through no fault of their own find themselves out of work for a period, will also find it a lot harder to rise above that 'level of success'.

Stan Shannon wrote:

I think people work at walmart because it provides them with a standard of living with which they are comfortable, or it is a temporary necessity as they prepare themselves for a better standard of living

I think you're insane. People work at Walmart because they have to.

Stan Shannon wrote:

The suggestion that wal-mart employees are slaves it what is dumb

Most companies like Wal mart in Australia hire only casual labour, and so workers are kept in a state of fear, because they are 'employed' ( so they can't get benefits ), but may not work for weeks at a time if they don't toe the line. No sick leave, no holidays, that's not slavery ?

Stan Shannon wrote:

When those same wal-mart employees become dependent upon the state then they are slaves, and so are those of us forced by the state to provide for them.

The issue really here is that a free market means every man for himself, which means those on the bottom rung get taken advantage of. A person with a job should not be given hand outs, but a person who works at Walmart is not in a position of power, and it is not in Walmarts interest when they have a large labor pool to draw from, to care about it's employees. This is why laws need to exist about things like minimum wages, because if someone has zero, then they will take an amount they cannot live on, because it's better than nothing, not because they are 'comfortable' with it.

Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista.