The world needs both. Necessary functions should be handled by the government. This means the fire department, the schools, the police force, and the health care, but with private alternatives if people want. |
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What steps need to be taken? Are current problems built into the system, or is it a matter of mismanagement? |
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If you have a sense of caring for others, you will manifest a kind of inner strength in spite of your own difficulties and problems. With this strength, your own problems will seem less significant and bothersome to you. By going beyond your own problems and taking care of others, you gain inner strength, self-confidence, courage, and a greater sense of calm.Dalai Lama
The world needs both. Necessary functions should be handled by the government. This means the fire department, the schools, the police force, and the health care, but with private alternatives if people want. |
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Well one of the biggest problem is the government giving money to people. If a business fails, its because its no longer profitable or was ran poorly. All the bailouts and stuff the government is always giving are horrible. They always go to help businesses that can't stand up on their own. It promotes bad business. |
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Businesses should not get money, people should. If a business fails, fuck it, but if it has to lay people off when it goes down, that isn't the fault of the people. The government should provide a little bit of unemployment for a few weeks while they find another job. But it should only give money for a set period of time, depending on the state of the economy. |
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Capitalism is not the problem. Crime is the problem. The government should tag criminals and punish them. That involves oversight and enforcement, which were lacking during the Bush years. |
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Last edited by Universal Mind; 03-12-2009 at 07:11 PM.
How do you know you are not dreaming right now?
The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is, not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended. - Frédéric Bastiat
I try to deny myself any illusions or delusions, and I think that this perhaps entitles me to try and deny the same to others, at least as long as they refuse to keep their fantasies to themselves. - Christopher Hitchens
Formerly known as BLUELINE976
I agree with the balance approach. I think the current state of health care helped me to reach that decision, particularly because it has reached the point where profit is valued over human life. I can't imagine not being able to pay for, say, fire coverage, and then all of a sudden have an inferno eating my home away just so that after the privatized fire department comes along and puts it out, they bill me for some $300,000. That, or they let my home burn to the ground and make sure protect the neighbouring homes from damage. |
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The vast majority of irresponsible behavior that backed us into the present corner stopped well short of breaking the law. The more pervasive problem is the pedestal upon which we've placed the profit motive. The genuine work ethic that built our industrial society gave way long ago to simple greed. |
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If you have a sense of caring for others, you will manifest a kind of inner strength in spite of your own difficulties and problems. With this strength, your own problems will seem less significant and bothersome to you. By going beyond your own problems and taking care of others, you gain inner strength, self-confidence, courage, and a greater sense of calm.Dalai Lama
The other variables were political pressure to lower loan standards and the screwiness of our business laws. |
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How do you know you are not dreaming right now?
I don't dispute that greed/profit is part of human nature, to be accounted for and capitalized upon. As I said, people won't work without compensation, but profit alone will not move them to do their work well. Love is also human nature. Altruism. Cooperation. Pride. To promote one to the exclusion of all others skews our society, and to suggest greed is more powerful or more 'real' than love skews it toward cynicism and misanthropy until the prophecy is self-fulfilled in a mess like we have on our hands today. It's the refuge of the Republican who declares, "Government does not work!" and proceeds to govern badly. People will gladly fulfill your low expectations if you spread them far and wide enough; the solution is not to keep muttering obscenities about your fellow human beings, but to expect more of them and yourself. |
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If you have a sense of caring for others, you will manifest a kind of inner strength in spite of your own difficulties and problems. With this strength, your own problems will seem less significant and bothersome to you. By going beyond your own problems and taking care of others, you gain inner strength, self-confidence, courage, and a greater sense of calm.Dalai Lama
It is the only thing that has any hope of doing it. You can talk to most people about love and commitment to society all day, show constant commercials about it, and have twenty songs in the top twenty about it, and people still want to just stay home and play X Box. Money (and for some people, power) is what gets people to go to work. Nothing else does, except (like I said) threats. |
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How do you know you are not dreaming right now?
Funny you should mention the Xbox. Microsoft has more money than anyone, jeeze, they really put out good stuff huh? |
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The title of the thread is "Reforming Capitalism," not "Chucking Capitalism and trying something else." The fact that money motivates people does not preclude other motivations, and you're well aware that a great many people would rather gouge out their eyes than stop doing anything productive and devote their lives to X Box. Money is necessary but not sufficient to a functioning society. |
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If you have a sense of caring for others, you will manifest a kind of inner strength in spite of your own difficulties and problems. With this strength, your own problems will seem less significant and bothersome to you. By going beyond your own problems and taking care of others, you gain inner strength, self-confidence, courage, and a greater sense of calm.Dalai Lama
Something productive, yeah. Like, gardening or getting some exercise or going to a Lion's Club meeting, sure. But money is what makes the work force do its thing. You never hear anybody say, "Dammit, it's 5:00 on Friday. We have to stay away from work for a few days starting now. Shit." They are there to generate income. That is what does the trick. |
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How do you know you are not dreaming right now?
Because people are by in large, stupid, which is what's wrong with capitalism. Most people buy clothes at Walmart, it doesn't make them better than Ralph Lauren. I wouldn't be caught dead in a Walmart shirt. Most people think Windows or Xbox are fine. I'm a software engineer, they aren't. Windows is a complete disaster from a software perspective, and because of that Microsoft has started the same downward spiral that IBM suffered in the 90s. Bill Gates (who happened to be one of Obama's biggest supporter) got out at the best time. |
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Last edited by ninja9578; 03-13-2009 at 01:22 PM.
The World needs to download and install a laissez-faire capitalist system. |
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How can I say it differently? NO ONE IS ARGUING THIS POSITION. Should I make the text bigger? Red? You haven't even built a strawman, you're just tilting at windmills. |
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If you have a sense of caring for others, you will manifest a kind of inner strength in spite of your own difficulties and problems. With this strength, your own problems will seem less significant and bothersome to you. By going beyond your own problems and taking care of others, you gain inner strength, self-confidence, courage, and a greater sense of calm.Dalai Lama
Okay, go have sex and then meditate for an hour. Then come back here and attempt to comprehend this conversation. |
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How do you know you are not dreaming right now?
I'm not talking about "alternatives." I'm not arguing for one "element" or another; I'm arguing against elevating any one human motivation or societal value above all others. You're simply scanning for recognizable keywords and giving canned responses which are non sequiturs to the discussion. |
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If you have a sense of caring for others, you will manifest a kind of inner strength in spite of your own difficulties and problems. With this strength, your own problems will seem less significant and bothersome to you. By going beyond your own problems and taking care of others, you gain inner strength, self-confidence, courage, and a greater sense of calm.Dalai Lama
No, I have not posted just one sentence that is on topic. You are trying to make this out to be so much more complicated than it actually is. You keep saying greed is not the only way and that it is dangerous to think so, and I keep saying the other considerations are bogus, and then you tell me I am making strawman arguments and going off on tangents. No I am not. I am explaining that there are no viable other alternatives. |
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How do you know you are not dreaming right now?
This thread has been good for me at work, getting me focused on serving my customers, and the incidental result has been more money in my pocket. It's one of the first things you learn in any decent sales program: focus on money and you won't get any; focus on service and you'll get plenty. |
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If you have a sense of caring for others, you will manifest a kind of inner strength in spite of your own difficulties and problems. With this strength, your own problems will seem less significant and bothersome to you. By going beyond your own problems and taking care of others, you gain inner strength, self-confidence, courage, and a greater sense of calm.Dalai Lama
I'm sure you would keep up the good work if they stopped paying you. |
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How do you know you are not dreaming right now?
See, we're having two different discussions here and, per my earlier warning, I'm forced to resort to red 3: NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT REMOVING THE PROFIT MOTIVE. |
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If you have a sense of caring for others, you will manifest a kind of inner strength in spite of your own difficulties and problems. With this strength, your own problems will seem less significant and bothersome to you. By going beyond your own problems and taking care of others, you gain inner strength, self-confidence, courage, and a greater sense of calm.Dalai Lama
No one is saying you are. You keep dogging greed, and I keep using nth degree examples to put a magnifying glass on the fact that it has no viable alternative. How many times do we have to go over this? |
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How do you know you are not dreaming right now?
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