World Government

[Audley Strange]

Capitalism stresses competition over cooperation. It's a distorted and destructive worldview, somewhat related to that monstrous failure of Social Darwinism. Its elitist proponents enslave the masses into wage servitude and tricks them into believing that that's a good thing. It's based on the alluring fallacy that more = better, and that can be taken several ways. "More stuff (money, really) = better life" or "More stuff = better/superior person," etc. As long as the devil isn't at your door, ie, as long as you fit into the middle or upper classes, rocking the boat is anathema. You resign yourself to accepting that there will always be poor and "that's just the way it is." But it doesn't have to be that way. The powahs that be could eradicate hunger worldwide in the snap of a finger, if they were so inclined. But they're not so inclined because they think they deserve more than others because they happened to be born into a system that they could manipulate. It's really just Calvinism with the god removed. And ad hoc rationalization coupled with a genuinely callous lack of concern for the suffering of the "darkies" and so forth.

Good rhetoric. I'll agree on one thing. The powers that be could eradicate hunger with a snap of a finger. However why bother? It's not like we've been forcing people to stay in famine zones for centuries. It's not our system that keeps them in their traditional lands spewing out baby after baby so they can watch them starve to death. For some reason we think this tradition is something to encourage by throwing money at them.

Our better way of life comes not from class but from a system that takes care of the many over the few, you can't easily deny that the West provided schooling, education, homes, fresh food, safe streets, effective refuse disposal and piped clean water to the majority of its citizens. You might not like our Elite, no one ever does, but as rich and as short sighted as they may be, there is a streak of philanthropy that has been at the heart of the system for at least a century. Capitalism played out live against other opponents in the 20th Century, the rest all failed. It is not a perfect system, but it has proven more effective than any of its competitors.

We don't need to tear it down and start again, we need to fine tune it, cut away the excesses.

[FBM]

...We don't need to tear it down and start again, we need to fine tune it, cut away the excesses.

This is all I'm saying.

[Hermit]

So do you think those were good results for the children in the factories who may be the only wage earner for their families...

May as well regard turning children into cripples to make them more effective beggars is good. They may after all be the only wage earner for their families. Win - win.

...some of us seem so absolute in condemning it...

Mentioning "chain of responsibility" is hardly that.

The poor in Aus who are now going to pay more for their clothes will just have to cut down on their consumption of ciggies, beer, fast food and playing the pokies. They may even need to curtail their habit of goin' fishin' in their 16' tinnie on weekends and rippin' up the landscape with their unregistered 250cc dirt bikes. Oh, the sacrifice! And all that so child slaves no longer die making cheap T-shirts for us. What the fuck is the world coming to?

[Audley Strange]

So do you think those were good results for the children in the factories who may be the only wage earner for their families...

May as well regard turning children into cripples to make them more effective beggars is good. They may after all be the only wage earner for their families. Win - win.

So if having a child working 12 hours a day in a factory is one option the others being to maim them, use them as beasts of burden in farms or to allow them to be raped for money, what do you think is the least harmful to the child and culture at large?

...some of us seem so absolute in condemning it...

Mentioning "chain of responsibility" is hardly that.

The poor in Aus who are now going to pay more for their clothes will just have to cut down on their consumption of ciggies, beer, fast food and playing the pokies. They may even need to curtail their habit of goin' fishin' in their 16' tinnie on weekends and rippin' up the landscape with their unregistered 250cc dirt bikes. Oh, the sacrifice! And all that so child slaves no longer die making cheap T-shirts for us. What the fuck is the world coming to? [/quote]

A very good point. However one can't blame the very last link in that chain. One can point to a different culture with a different system first, then one can point to the parents, then the corporations, then the suppliers and finally the purchaser. I'm not sure consumer disinterest is driving other cultures child labour laws, though it is no doubt benefiting from it. Yes the children should be in school, getting an education, you know like we do in the system that we have. I'm not sure we have that solely at the expense of others, though undoubtedly we have taken gross liberties.

I will say that I think our system is flawed in so far as we have allowed multi-national corporations to wield so much influence over nation states including our own and that they should be dismantled as they are actually becoming inimical to actual growth and development across the globe. However first nation states have to get by the delusion that somehow they are in their countries interest. Despite that though, nothing shows me that any other political system as nearly as functional as ours while offering such quality of life for most of its citizens, not even in the same league.

[Hermit]

So if having a child working 12 hours a day in a factory is one option the others being to maim them, use them as beasts of burden in farms or to allow them to be raped for money, what do you think is the least harmful to the child and culture at large?

Of course the latter two are worse, but it's not as if every child that is no longer works 12 days a day in a factory will become a sex slave or intentionally crippled beggar. Your rhetoric sucks.

...one can't blame the very last link in that chain.

Of course one can, but please point out which part of "chain of responsibility" excludes concurrently blaming other links?

[FBM]

Well, I'm not suggesting a full system change, just some sane adjustments in order to curb some of the insanity. If I were in charge of things, there would be no millionaires or billionaires until everyone had at least decent shelter and food. I'm not advocating full-blown socialism or communism, but I do think we could stand to get over our state-fueled paranoia about those words and adopt whatever means necessary to solve the problems. But as it is, Obama is already a socialist, and so is anyone who hates to see poor people. I'm not talking about limitless handouts, unless the person has a medical reason for not being able to work, but free education for the poor would be a start.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_education

[pErvinalia]

Excessive material goods as well as poverty are both relative to social surroundings. If you potter around in a ten year old BMW 180i while most of your neighbours, friends, acquaintances and work colleagues are trading their two year old Porsche GT3s and Mercedes CLK Kompressors for new models, your car does not qualify as excessive material goods. It does though if you are surrounded by people who have no running water, electricity, basic health facilities and the local schools consist of straw huts with dirt floors and the only teachers are volunteers who are only prepared to do the job because it allows them to brandish their Bibles or Korans.

I don't see why one would make such an arbitrary distinction. We're all stuck on this planet together. What difference does it make who my neighbours are when there are millions of poverty stricken people in throughout the world?

[pErvinalia]

Capitalism stresses competition over cooperation. It's a distorted and destructive worldview, somewhat related to that monstrous failure of Social Darwinism. Its elitist proponents enslave the masses into wage servitude and tricks them into believing that that's a good thing. It's based on the alluring fallacy that more = better, and that can be taken several ways. "More stuff (money, really) = better life" or "More stuff = better/superior person," etc. As long as the devil isn't at your door, ie, as long as you fit into the middle or upper classes, rocking the boat is anathema. You resign yourself to accepting that there will always be poor and "that's just the way it is." But it doesn't have to be that way. The powahs that be could eradicate hunger worldwide in the snap of a finger, if they were so inclined. But they're not so inclined because they think they deserve more than others because they happened to be born into a system that they could manipulate. It's really just Calvinism with the god removed. And ad hoc rationalization coupled with a genuinely callous lack of concern for the suffering of the "darkies" and so forth.

Good rhetoric. I'll agree on one thing. The powers that be could eradicate hunger with a snap of a finger. However why bother? It's not like we've been forcing people to stay in famine zones for centuries. It's not our system that keeps them in their traditional lands spewing out baby after baby so they can watch them starve to death. For some reason we think this tradition is something to encourage by throwing money at them.

Our better way of life comes not from class but from a system that takes care of the many over the few, you can't easily deny that the West provided schooling, education, homes, fresh food, safe streets, effective refuse disposal and piped clean water to the majority of its citizens. You might not like our Elite, no one ever does, but as rich and as short sighted as they may be, there is a streak of philanthropy that has been at the heart of the system for at least a century. Capitalism played out live against other opponents in the 20th Century, the rest all failed. It is not a perfect system, but it has proven more effective than any of its competitors.

We don't need to tear it down and start again, we need to fine tune it, cut away the excesses.

You really are fucking clueless! And I'm not going to explain, because you aren't going to read it. Suffice to say, it's not a case of capitalism in the west, and something else in the east. The state of the world is largely driven by the powers that be. In past times, it was colonialism with its mercantilism. Then capitalism came out of that.

[Hermit]

What difference does it make who my neighbours are when there are millions of poverty stricken people in throughout the world?

None. Nevertheless, we are more affected by our immediate environment than by what we see on the telly. Will you pass the proceeds of the sale of your farm on to the remote, poverty stricken people? Or even your neighbours? Or is it more likely that if there are any benefactors besides you, they will be your children? In other words, get real.

[pErvinalia]

...some of us seem so absolute in condemning it...

Mentioning "chain of responsibility" is hardly that.

The poor in Aus who are now going to pay more for their clothes will just have to cut down on their consumption of ciggies, beer, fast food and playing the pokies. They may even need to curtail their habit of goin' fishin' in their 16' tinnie on weekends and rippin' up the landscape with their unregistered 250cc dirt bikes. Oh, the sacrifice! And all that so child slaves no longer die making cheap T-shirts for us. What the fuck is the world coming to?

A very good point. However one can't blame the very last link in that chain. One can point to a different culture with a different system first, then one can point to the parents, then the corporations, then the suppliers and finally the purchaser. I'm not sure consumer disinterest is driving other cultures child labour laws, though it is no doubt benefiting from it. Yes the children should be in school, getting an education, you know like we do in the system that we have. I'm not sure we have that solely at the expense of others, though undoubtedly we have taken gross liberties.

Where do you think a lot of the wealth came from that we have in the first world? It came from colonial exploitation of the third world. And it continues today, albeit in a slightly less bloody form.

[FBM]

And wage slavery, like WalMart, McD's, etc.

[pErvinalia]

What difference does it make who my neighbours are when there are millions of poverty stricken people in throughout the world?

None. Nevertheless, we are more affected by our immediate environment than by what we see on the telly. Will you pass the proceeds of the sale of your farm on to the remote, poverty stricken people? Or even your neighbours? Or is it more likely that if there are any benefactors besides you, they will be your children? In other words, get real.

I was directly responding to your silly assertion that excessive wealth is relative based on your local surrounds. Poverty definitely is. But a giant gas guzzling US SUV for driving the kids to school is excessive no matter where you live.

[pErvinalia]

And wage slavery, like WalMart, McD's, etc.

Yep, but it wasn't until IMF and World Bank backed unfair global trade kicked in that we realised we could really drive real wages down with the threat of exporting jobs off to the third world.

[Hermit]

I was directly responding to your silly assertion that excessive wealth is relative based on your local surrounds.

What we conceive of as excessive wealth and poverty are two sides of the same coin. Of course you can see it on a global scale. My point is that we generally don't, and I tried to illustrate it with a grimly amusing paragraph. In the post you quoted I also asserted that you are doing the same. World poverty? Too bad, so sad, but my money is not excessive wealth in comparison and goes towards funding my children's future university courses. Or something along those lines.

[Audley Strange]

So if having a child working 12 hours a day in a factory is one option the others being to maim them, use them as beasts of burden in farms or to allow them to be raped for money, what do you think is the least harmful to the child and culture at large?

Of course the latter two are worse, but it's not as if every child that is no longer works 12 days a day in a factory will become a sex slave or intentionally crippled beggar. Your rhetoric sucks.

Well you were the one who brought up the option of crippling children. I also pointed to being beasts of burden which is by far the most common for those who don't have any schooling and can't work in factories either for parents of local business owners (one lovely scheme had all the local kids working for nothing because the local government paid the farmers to "educate" them, from money sent by foreign governments as education charity) There are plenty of options most of them are not great why exclude one which might be beneficial to the kids their family, businesses and the consumer because some Westerners likely unaffected by any of it get all upset by it, especially if the ramifications of withdrawing from that sphere puts children at greater risk of worse exploitation no?

...one can't blame the very last link in that chain.

Of course one can, but please point out which part of "chain of responsibility" excludes concurrently blaming other links?[/quote]

Well of course you can but it would be a bit of a stretch to blame the end user for a bug in the programme. Ultimately the government responsible is responsible therefore one excludes them, no other part of the chain can even be accused of something.