On 9/14/2012 1:50 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Friday, September 14, 2012 12:33:45 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote:
On 9/14/2012 8:07 AM, Roger Clough wrote:
Hi Craig Weinberg
Fortunately or unfortunately, capitalism is Darwinism, pure and
simple.
So it can prepare for a better future, although it can be painful
at present. My own take on this is that there needs to be
a calculus of pleasure and pain. Jeremy Bentham suggested
perhaps an impfect one.
In lieu of that, I am all for food stamps and safety
nets.
Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net <javascript:>
Dear Roger,
I completely disagree. Darwinism does not consider valuations
beyond the concept of relative fitness. Capitalism is a theory of
valuation and exchange between entities. It does include concept
that are analogous to those in darwinism, just as the "fitness" of
a trader to make multiple trades, and so I can see some analogy
between them, but to claim equivalence is simply false.
Yes! People conflate Social Darwinism
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism) with Darwin's
evolution. The idea of 'survival of the fittest' is also (see the
Wiki) a misinterpretation. Evolution is just a blind statistical
filtering of organisms which happen to survive in any given niche.
Being fit has nothing whatsoever with being aggressive, greedy, or
selfish, and indeed most species on Earth seem much more relaxed and
gentle than human beings most of the time.
IMHO, Food stamps and safety nets encourage risky behavior
that is better if suppressed for the general welfare of the
population, thus I am against them in principle. Why work to
sustain my physical existence with my own toil if I can depend on
the coercive taxation on others to sustain me?
Eh, I would rather increase that stuff by 10 times than five one more
dollar to subsidize corporations. The amount of money set aside for
that stuff is tiny compared to everything else. It can certainly be a
disincentive for people to look for work, but I think we need to
confront the reality that the US doesn't really need very many people
to work anymore. Most of what the US does is own things. That doesn't
require a large workforce. Without manufacturing or a growing middle
class, there really isn't much demand for more undereducated,
unhealthy, unrealistically ambitious American workers.
Craig
Amen!
--
Onward!
Stephen
http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html
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