• Cyprus now looks to take 25 percent from bank accounts of wealthy
    137 replies, posted
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;40030260]What utter drivel. A transaction is agreed upon by the people in the exchange. . .[/QUOTE] that doesn't make the transaction equal though
[QUOTE=Kopimi;40030251]i think there's a large difference between trying to maintain a cohesive society complete with laws and public services and raping someone is it "like rape" for the government to arrest me after murdering someone? after all, i don't want to go to prison, so they're forcing me into something whether or not i have faith in the prison system to rehabilitate me.[/QUOTE] in principle there's very little difference. the sovereignty of the human being, their very dignity, is stripped for the sake of cohesion, law, and "public services".
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;40030260]What utter drivel. A transaction is agreed upon by the people in the exchange. If you offered somebody something less than X value, their labour is undervalued. A competitor would soon realize this and offer higher wages, and wages would then return to the same level.[/QUOTE] Can you actually provide a factual example of this equilibrium at work? Because for the hard talk they spout about how the free market works, they seem to have a hard time backing those things up with real world examples. In the United States the average [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_wage"]real wage[/URL] (a wage which has been adjusted for inflation) has been on a sporadic decline since the end of the sixties and that decline is only more profound when measured against the continued growth of America's Gross Domestic Product. [editline]24th March 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=yawmwen;40030396]in principle there's very little difference. the sovereignty of the human being, their very dignity, is stripped for the sake of cohesion, law, and "public services".[/QUOTE] oh thbbbbt. How much of a total dweeb do you have to be to think just going around and wantonly comparing anything you don't like to rape makes you look like to normal humans? It takes a special kind of just really gross obliviousness to women's issues to think that's ok.
[QUOTE=yawmwen;40030396]in principle there's very little difference. the sovereignty of the human being, their very dignity, is stripped for the sake of cohesion, law, and "public services".[/QUOTE] are we saying prison is inherently bad or rape is inherently not that bad because i'm extremely confused where you're going with this
[QUOTE=SigmaLambda;40030427] oh thbbbbt. How much of a total dorkus malorkus do you have to be to think just going around and wantonly comparing anything you don't like to rape makes you look like to normal humans?[/QUOTE] i don't "wantonly compare anything i don't like" to rape. it should be clear that the comparison is a heavy one meant to illustrate the way government strips human beings of their very dignity and self-determination. it violates our most fundamental rights then tries to convince us we never had the rights to begin with. [editline]25th March 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=Kopimi;40030467]are we saying prison is inherently bad[/QUOTE] prison is inherently bad
[QUOTE=Kopimi;40030273]that doesn't make the transaction equal though[/QUOTE] And those smaller unequal transactions are amalgamated and redistributed throughout the global economy; which is how we end up with Chinese workers in sweatshops working for cents an hour and CEOs making vast sums of money despite the total failure of the companies they run.
[QUOTE=yawmwen;40030477]prison is inherently bad[/QUOTE] are you an anarchist or something what's happening right now
[QUOTE=Kopimi;40030522]are you an anarchist or something what's happening right now[/QUOTE] i am actually.
you are allowed to be an anarchist without being really super dour about the 'dignity of human beings' and especially without comparing things to rape, seeing as how rape is a phenomenon with unique social and cultural implications and not just another metonym for "taking something by force"
[QUOTE=SigmaLambda;40030578]you are allowed to be an anarchist without being really super dour about the 'dignity of human beings' and especially without comparing things to rape, seeing as how rape is a phenomenon with unique social and cultural implications and not just another metonym for "taking something by force"[/QUOTE] well duh rape has unique social and cultural implications. that doesn't mean that it can't be compared with other things if other things share similar characteristics or arguably similar implications(except on a larger scale with more people).
i think the issue is you're making a really broad and general stretch to rape just so you can align the emotional and controversial impact of a topic like rape to something as benign as taxation. there are a million things that include doing something against someone's will, choosing rape out of that massive pool of options is just a really cheap way of trying to attach the same stigma and emotions that go along with rape to taxation [editline]25th March 2013[/editline] its just unnecessary and feels like you're either blowing taxation out of proportion or trivializing the actual impact of rape by making that comparison
[QUOTE=yawmwen;40030629]well duh rape has unique social and cultural implications. that doesn't mean that it can't be compared with other things if other things share similar characteristics or arguably similar implications(except on a larger scale with more people).[/QUOTE] yes it does? Having such a particularly unique socio-cultural weight should preclude it from being wantonly used in simile. Rape is a violation of a person wholly different from murder or theft because of the culture that surrounds it and the social attitudes towards it's victims and so comparing it to those things is a textbook example of "not using words correctly". How about this, then? Going around and comparing things that aren't rape to rape delegitimizes it by stripping it of it's unique implications and is just plain-old-fashioned insensitive and cut that shit out.
ok then
If the banks crash, everyone will lose 100% of their money.
[QUOTE=SigmaLambda;40027920]well yeah that's basic math and the 1st law of thermodynamics. The fundamental mechanism of capitalism is the unequal transaction. You can't turn a profit unless you give people slightly less than what they pay for.[/QUOTE] this is absolute insanity I have no idea why this has 5 agrees and a zing economic transactions are not zero sum please do the slightest bit of research on something before you post about it I mean what the fuck does that even have to do with thermodynamics you're just saying long sciency words to sound smart [editline]25th March 2013[/editline] [quote]A surprising number of people retain from childhood the idea that there is a fixed amount of wealth in the world. There is, in any normal family, a fixed amount of money at any moment. But that's not the same thing. When wealth is talked about in this context, it is often described as a pie. "You can't make the pie larger," say politicians. When you're talking about the amount of money in one family's bank account, or the amount available to a government from one year's tax revenue, this is true. If one person gets more, someone else has to get less. I can remember believing, as a child, that if a few rich people had all the money, it left less for everyone else. Many people seem to continue to believe something like this well into adulthood. This fallacy is usually there in the background when you hear someone talking about how x percent of the population have y percent of the wealth. If you plan to start a startup, then whether you realize it or not, you're planning to disprove the Pie Fallacy. What leads people astray here is the abstraction of money. Money is not wealth. It's just something we use to move wealth around. So although there may be, in certain specific moments (like your family, this month) a fixed amount of money available to trade with other people for things you want, there is not a fixed amount of wealth in the world. You can make more wealth. Wealth has been getting created and destroyed (but on balance, created) for all of human history. Suppose you own a beat-up old car. Instead of sitting on your butt next summer, you could spend the time restoring your car to pristine condition. In doing so you create wealth. The world is-- and you specifically are-- one pristine old car the richer. And not just in some metaphorical way. If you sell your car, you'll get more for it. In restoring your old car you have made yourself richer. You haven't made anyone else poorer. So there is obviously not a fixed pie. And in fact, when you look at it this way, you wonder why anyone would think there was.[/quote] [url]http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html[/url] [editline]25th March 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=Kopimi;40027409]can i get a source on all this "least corrupt government / judicial system" that doesn't come from the singapore government[/QUOTE] sure [quote]In 2011, in the World Justice Project's Rule of Law Index Singapore was ranked in the top countries surveyed in "Order and Security", "Absence of Corruption", and "Effective Criminal Justice"[/quote]
It takes someone really special like yawmwen to make sigmalambda look intelligent.
[QUOTE=FlashMarsh;40032817]It takes someone really special like yawmwen to make sigmalambda look intelligent.[/QUOTE] And I though the day where I would agree with sigmalambda would never occur. And yet it just did. Also lol @ calling Singapore a nice place to live. It's a Ponzi democracy, not to mention: [url]http://www.nzweek.com/business/singapore-6th-most-expensive-city-to-live-in-survey-47530/[/url]
[QUOTE=SigmaLambda;40030427]Can you actually provide a factual example of this equilibrium at work? Because for the hard talk they spout about how the free market works, they seem to have a hard time backing those things up with real world examples. In the United States the average [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_wage"]real wage[/URL] (a wage which has been adjusted for inflation) has been on a sporadic decline since the end of the sixties and that decline is only more profound when measured against the continued growth of America's Gross Domestic Product.[/QUOTE] Bullshit, real wage hasn't been declining. At best you can argue that it's stalled. [img_thumb]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/US_productivity_and_real_wages.jpg[/img_thumb] [url]http://www.dallasfed.org/assets/documents/fed/annual/1999/ar97.pdf[/url] Also your own source disagrees with you. Remember that goods are getting cheaper, and that although wages have stalled, you can buy more these days with those wages than in the past. [editline]25th March 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=Kopimi;40030273]that doesn't make the transaction equal though[/QUOTE] It's equal given the value of their labour. The particular work that person did has a certain market value. Some people value some goods more than others, and obviously the work that's harder to do, and/or in greater demand is going to fetch higher wages. [editline]25th March 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=SigmaLambda;40030504]And those smaller unequal transactions are amalgamated and redistributed throughout the global economy; which is how we end up with Chinese workers in sweatshops working for cents an hour and CEOs making vast sums of money despite the total failure of the companies they run.[/QUOTE] Bullshit. The reason Chinese workers are working for cents an hour is because competition forced the wages down there. Also most CEOs aren't obscenely wealthy retarded people who crash and burn companies for shits and giggles. What's your alternative? How would you rebuild society?
[QUOTE=Van-man;40032924]Also lol @ calling Singapore a nice place to live. It's a Ponzi democracy, not to mention: [url]http://www.nzweek.com/business/singapore-6th-most-expensive-city-to-live-in-survey-47530/[/url][/QUOTE] those aren't bugs, they're features [editline]25th March 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=Sobotnik;40033031]The reason Chinese workers are working for cents an hour is because competition forced the wages down there.[/QUOTE] and also because they don't have much alternative remember whenever you refuse to buy something because it was made from sweatshop labor, you're contributing to unemployment
[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;40033078]remember whenever you refuse to buy something because it was made from sweatshop labor, you're contributing to unemployment[/QUOTE] Pretty much. Back in India or China, you are seeing right now what happened during the 18th century in England. Loads of small landholders becoming perplexed because competition and the collapse of price controls are forcing them off the fields into the cities. Spread of disease and squalor (which needs addressing by local and national governments) are big problems, but in absolute financial terms they are doing better now than their ancestors.
[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;40033078]those aren't bugs, they're features[/QUOTE] it's great how we're back to ignoring Singapore's high execution rate, including a large number of executions for the non-violent crime of drug trafficking.
[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;40033078]those aren't bugs, they're features[/QUOTE] So Singapore is the Apple equivalent of a country? Okay...
Fuck money.
[QUOTE=Worldwaker;40023068]"So, guys. How do we make literally everyone in our country either leave, hate us, or want to go revolt? Now, we've already got the poor, how do we piss off the people who have actual say?" A government has failed at it's job. Why are we acting like we did when the banks started to fall? Let it collapse, move in with corporations, make the business of government an actual business. Cyprus wouldn't be in the shitter then.[/QUOTE] Aye, they did fail at their job. They didn't tax the rich intensively enough before now.
[QUOTE=SigmaLambda;40033823]it's great how we're back to ignoring Singapore's high execution rate, including a large number of executions for the non-violent crime of drug trafficking.[/QUOTE] So, wheres them rebuttals to my arguments then?
[QUOTE=Boba_Fett;40023157]So if a government does a terrible job, they can justify stealing from their citizens?[/QUOTE] Yes, that's what people voted for. :v:
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;40033031] The reason Chinese workers are working for cents an hour is because competition forced the wages down there.[/QUOTE] Hmm. I could have sworn you said that competition kept wages up [QUOTE=Sobotnik;40030260] If you offered somebody something less than X value, their labour is undervalued. A competitor would soon realize this and offer higher wages, and wages would then return to the same level.[/QUOTE] I mean I can't really rebut your points if you're not keeping consistent ones
[QUOTE=SigmaLambda;40036274]Hmm. I could have sworn you said that competition kept wages up I mean I can't really rebut your points if you're not keeping consistent ones[/QUOTE] You don't understand competition as a concept then. If labour is undervalued, competition will force wages up. If labour is overvalued, competition will force wages down. This isn't a very difficult concept to grasp.
[QUOTE=SigmaLambda;40036274]Hmm. I could have sworn you said that competition kept wages up[/QUOTE] are you simple or something companies compete for workers by offering higher wages. if a company X offers higher wages than company Y, then people will want to work for company X likewise, workers compete to work at lower wages, which drives them down it isn't that hard
The reason the Chinese are not starving in the million's is because they embraced free market's and abandoned central planning, as well as giving up on strong government controls over the economy. When the workers are in demand the companies offer higher wages to grab them up. When workers surplus the workers offer to work for lower wages so that they can be hired. This is ideally how it works.
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