Water

@Lordyaswas,

How are we not better served by an abundance of apples such as has never been seen before?
So the local producers no longer have an exclusive product, but the majority wins out.

1 Reply

@Cyracuz,

Absolutely, but it's ended up like "the trouble with tribbles" as far as our apple farmers are concerned.
I love the thought of the whole world having plenty of apples, but they don't need to send their excess back here, as we produce ( or used to produce) enough of our own.
I say they all have cider parties around the globe if they have too many. Very Happy

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@Frank Apisa,

Quote:

Many of us here have indicated that while we are capitalists at heart, we think capitalism is killing itself by allowing itself to be unfettered in any way with social responsibilities

Capitalism doesn't allow itself to be this way. We make it that way by acting as if the ideals of capitalism can replace the ideologies that our nations were founded on.
But it is an economic system. It does not even touch on our ideals and beliefs about what is humane and right.
But this economic system is carried way beyond it's own boundaries, and it has become another religion. A religion in which economy has substituted morality.

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@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

Quote:
Many of us here have indicated that while we are capitalists at heart, we think capitalism is killing itself by allowing itself to be unfettered in any way with social responsibilities

Capitalism doesn't allow itself to be this way. We make it that way by acting as if the ideals of capitalism can replace the ideologies that our nations were founded on.
But it is an economic system. It does not even touch on our ideals and beliefs about what is humane and right.
But this economic system is carried way beyond it's own boundaries, and it has become another religion. A religion in which economy has substituted morality.

Not sure how you arrive at where you are on that, Cyracuz...but the essence of capitalism is to obtain as great a profit as possible...without regard for any supposed social responsibility.

That simply is the way capitalism works.

If the managers of a company were to say to shareholders..."we could be making more profits, but we feel we have a social responsibility to employ more people at decent salaries...so we are doing that at a cost to profitability"...

...those managers would soon be looking for new jobs.

(The Henry Ford semi-myth notwithstanding!)

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@Frank Apisa,

Quote:

Just as unfettered capitalism is screwing with the ability of society to function at its best...the notion of the masses that EVERYONE ought to be "productive" and "to contribute"...does as much damage.

I do not agree. Our current notion of everyone contributing means "everyone fall in line and take your place at the production line", and our idea of what is a valuable contribution is fucked, to put it mildly.

Contributing isn't necessarily to put in eight hours every day. I can be to write a poem that catches an issue from a unique perspective, thereby opening up new venues of debate. It can be to starve in protest, inspiring entire nations to great change. People have even contributed simply by getting a rare disease, the occurrence of which provided opportunities to gain new insights into human biology.

What I mean to say is that we would be stronger as a species if as many of us as possible were given the potential to become what we can be. Diversity is not something capitalism promotes, and without it we become vulnerable.

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@Cyracuz,

Quote:

Every advantage we enjoy, every bit of welfare or technology is due to that fact. It is, in it's entirety, a team effort.
With that in mind, the most intelligent thing to do would be to take care of the whole team. To make sure that as many as possible are healthy and happy and able to be productive and to contribute.

This very clearly is not true. War is part of human nature.

We evolved to fight and kill each other. And we have gained quite a bit of "advantage" from it in our evolutionary history. The genes of warlike humans survived because they had the ability to get the resources they needed. And a good deal of our technology and the motivation for advancement (even in art and music) comes from war, or nationalism.

We have evolved to live in tribes. It is our team vs. their team. It has been like that since before the beginning of history.

This idea of "global community" has never existed until very recently. In fact it is simply unnatural. That is not to say it isn't a good idea.

But nature is filled with killing and war and cruelty and theft and rape and slavery in a fight for survival. To argue that global community has anything to do with nature is completely illogical.

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@maxdancona,

Quote:

This very clearly is not true. War is part of human nature.

Except that even war would be impossible if we could not form allegiances and societies. What I said is true, and it is doubly true for war.

And when it comes to what is natural... it is natural for us to seek the best, most beneficial way of developing and evolving, to ensure that we survive anything that might come.
Up to this point that may have been war and inter species conflict.
But we are learning a better, more efficient way. It has been in the works for millions of years. Every turn of evolution has brought us closer to it, to the point that it's spoken of now more often than any time before. A global community.
It will happen. That is for sure.
The only question is will it be a community of free people working together, or will it be a community of slaves catering to a wealthy elite?

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@Cyracuz,

You have a very unscientific view of evolution.

Evolution isn't magic, and it doesn't "bring us closer" to anything.

Ants, who are happy to kill and rob each other in brutal wars, are just as evolutionarily advanced as we are. They aren't becoming any less war-like. Factually, I don't see any evidence that humans are either.

If you were correct that evolution led to some hypothetical perfectly "moral" being, then every animal over time would develop the same traits.

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@maxdancona,

Are you one of those who think that human action is somehow outside evolution? That is just arrogance.

A comparison with humans to ant goes only so far.
Perhaps we are not becoming less war-like. But we are becoming smarter. And it is smarter to make allies than to make enemies.

Quote:

If you were correct that evolution led to some hypothetical perfectly "moral" being, then every animal over time would develop the same traits.

I haven't said that evolution leads to perfectly moral beings. But it certainly leads to something better than what was. At this point we have some measure of control over that, but not nearly full control.

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@Cyracuz,

Quote:

Perhaps we are not becoming less war-like. But we are becoming smarter. And it is smarter to make allies than to make enemies.

The reason that humans make allies is so they can gang up on a common enemy. Allies aren't to end war or killing. Allies are a tactic to help you kill more efficiently (with fewer of your own soldiers having to give up their lives).

Can you give an example of an alliance that didn't involve killing?

1 Reply

@Cyracuz,

I also see no evidence that humans, as a species, are getting any less warlike.

How many wars are going on right now?

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@Cyracuz,

No, my idea that people have the right to take action against something which is harming them is an appeal to natural rights, the right of self-defense. It has nothing to do with any moral code. Don't put words in my mouth. I had said that this topic is grist for a different mill. If you want to talk about morality and moral codes, why don't you start another thread.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

Quote:

The reason that humans make allies is so they can gang up on a common enemy.

Regardless. To make allies requires people to ally with. To gang up on someone requires people to be the enemy.

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@Setanta,

Quote:

No, my idea that people have the right to take action against something which is harming them is an appeal to natural rights, the right of self-defense.

I also embrace this ideal. But it seems to me that it is my moral compass, so to speak, that points me in that direction.

Quote:

It has nothing to do with any moral code

I partly agree. This sense of "natural rights" is what motivates people to create moral codes. But no moral code can fully encompass this sense we possess of what is the right thing to do, so you are right in saying that it has nothing o do with any moral code. Such codes are parodies of morality.

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@Cyracuz,

If you try to kill the dog, the dog will probably try to bite you. Do you allege that the dog is a moral agent? I don't agree at all that moral codes are the product of a sense of natural rights. Both terms--natural rights and moral codes--are far, far younger, by at least tens of thousands of years, than homo sapiens sapiens.

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@Cyracuz,

exactly

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OK, your remark about parodies of morality just sank in with me . . . never mind.

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@Setanta,

Quote:

If you try to kill the dog, the dog will probably try to bite you. Do you allege that the dog is a moral agent?

No. But if you would not fault the dog for trying to bite, you are a making a moral judgement. You understand the source of the aggression and consider it legitimate, contrary to if the dog tried to bite unprovoked.
And if the dog were to be put down for trying to bite, you might intervene and say that the dog isn't really dangerous, that guy was being mean to it. The sense of what is right and wrong here does not come from any code. It comes from the mutual understanding between all living things that we will fight to survive.
That, it seems to me, is at the core of morality.

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@Cyracuz,

So what about Wolves in the wild?

Wolves fight and kill each other. That is the nature of wolves. And Wolves force other wolves to have sex with them with the threat of physical violence.

Why would anyone ever apply one set of arbitrary human rules of morality to non-humans? Morality only applies to a specific human society. Trying to apply these moral rules outside of the society where it applies is ridiculous.

1 Reply

@Cyracuz,

I take back what i said about never mind. You would call the decision to cross the street now rather than at the next corner a moral judgment. Your apparent definition of morality is so vague as to be meaningless.

1 Reply

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