If Mort Divine ruled the world

[Einherjar86]

If borders are such terrible things then why did they ever exist in the first place?

I wonder if he realizes you can say this about--literally--anything.

"If fascism is such a terrible thing then why did it ever exist in the first place?"

"If murder is such a terrible thing then why did it ever exist in the first place?"

"If Babymetal is such a terrible thing, then why did it ever exist in the first place?"

What a dumb fucking thing to say.

 

[CiG]

"If Babymetal is such a terrible thing, then why did it ever exist in the first place?"

You're on fire lately.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

1. Creating and needing aren’t mutually exclusive.

2. Regions of scarcity may be locally ex-leftist, but the global axiomatic is capitalism. As soon as local regions attempt something other than free trade internally, they’re usually excluded from international trade internationally (or seriously disadvantaged by it).

3. Capitalism can alleviate scarcity, absolutely; but if it actually distributed its products evenly then it would leave little or no incentive for people to compete (hence why capitalism “needs” competition).

A lot of what you said is exactly right, but you’re assuming there’s a supreme universal perspective from which to interpret the situation. I’m telling you there isn’t. Capitalism is the greatest distributing force in the history of the world, and yet still promotes poverty, misery, and exclusion. It has to in order to survive.

1. Ok?

2. Up to the 1950s yeah it happened to varying extents for varying reasons (in the 1910s Woody liked to invade Latin American nations just to protect industry whereas the CIA-fueled coup in Iran in the 50s was as much geopolitical as it was to protect BP), but that's not really true anymore. Even under Hugo Chavez as he nationalized oil fields and other natural resources with Western stakes, we never applied any real sanctions. The world economy is so large that it frankly doesn't matter to us how some countries choose to run their economies, because there are dozens of other alternatives. And the reason we're in that state today is thanks to an international shift towards neoliberal policies in the 70s and beyond.

3. I don't know what you mean by even distribution of products. Capitalists distribute products according to the extent of customers to pay for them. Capitalists compete by delivering more product for less customer money relative to the next capitalist. Capitalism doesn't require poverty, though certainly the more poverty that exists (i.e. the lower the standard of living), the cheaper the labor. For socially-defective nations that intentionally keep their populations in poverty, yeah capitalists can exploit that, but that's only because it's one-sided capitalism. The fundamental problem comes from their governments.

I wonder if he realizes you can say this about--literally--anything.

"If fascism is such a terrible thing then why did it ever exist in the first place?"

"If murder is such a terrible thing then why did it ever exist in the first place?"

"If Babymetal is such a terrible thing, then why did it ever exist in the first place?"

What a dumb fucking thing to say.

Except borders are generally agreed-upon by entire governments, many of which are representative and follow the desires of the people. Murder only takes a single individual to commit on their own free will for it to exist, the state of murder is brief, and governments and populations alike generally work together to reduce murder as much as possible. He's asking an obvious rhetorical question in response to libs that parrot "Bridges not walls" without even considering the massive value backed by millennia of history behind borders.

 

[The Ozzman]

xcept borders are generally agreed-upon by entire governments

I thought borders were a social construct?

 

[Dak]

Nope, but they care about context and relevance. You can ask me for numbers on whether we can afford to lift the global poor above the poverty line, and I can tell you the sun is 93 million miles from earth. That fact doesn’t care about your feelings either, but it doesn’t do me much good.

That's true, but I keep providing numbers with context and relevance to the conversation. You're behaving like a creationist being exposed to carbon dating results.

Except borders are generally agreed-upon by entire governments, many of which are representative and follow the desires of the people. Murder only takes a single individual to commit on their own free will for it to exist, the state of murder is brief, and governments and populations alike generally work together to reduce murder as much as possible. He's asking an obvious rhetorical question in response to libs that parrot "Bridges not walls" without even considering the massive value backed by millennia of history behind borders.

Sometimes Chesterton's fence is a literal fence.

 

[Blurry_Dreams]

U.S. border wall funding of $1.57 billion yields 1.7 miles of fence

“The administration recently provided updated information to Congress on the status of its efforts as of April 30, 2019,” the attorney, Douglas Letter, said in a court filing. “Based on that updated information, it appears that CBP has now constructed 1.7 miles of fencing with its fiscal year 2018 funding.”

That was 3/4 of a mile more than the administration reported at the end of February, Letter said.

U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam had asked for the information at a May 17 hearing.

where-the-fuck did all the money go??

 

[arg]

If you give the poorest people their basic needs, they will still be poor, but healthy enough to make babies. That is bad.

Thus creating more poor people, who will need more wealth redistribution. More money out of your and my paychecks.

Not all wealth redistribution is bad, but it must be targeted, and conditional.

Only give it to poor people who
1. show potential to become productive
2. will not breed until they can support themselves and their offspring unaided

The poorest, most hopeless cases, the worst shitholes of the world, should be left to starve and suffer so badly that they won’t even want to reproduce, and just die off.

 

[Blurry_Dreams]

If you give the poorest people their basic needs, they will still be poor, but healthy enough to make babies. That is bad.

Thus creating more poor people, who will need more wealth redistribution. More money out of your and my paychecks.

Not all wealth redistribution is bad, but it must be targeted, and conditional.

Only give it to poor people who
1. show potential to become productive
2. will not breed until they can support themselves and their offspring unaided

i believe in the concept of mandatory abortion
i believe in the idea of a list of situations where an abortion should be mandatory instead of merely an option
and of-course people who cannot financially support the children they make is at the top of the list
if you love penis-in-vagina sex and you get knocked-up because you're too broke to afford condoms/spermicide,
then you're too broke to afford a kid

but
if you're making broke people become sterile from malnutrition
this just seems wrong

i'm willing to make a list of people who need to be surgically/chemically sterilized
(such as the guy that already had 6 different baby-mamas before his 19th birthday)
but sterility caused by malnutrition just seems too cruel

 

[Blurry_Dreams]

If you give the poorest people their basic needs, they will still be poor, but healthy enough to make babies. That is bad.

Thus creating more poor people, who will need more wealth redistribution. More money out of your and my paychecks.

Not all wealth redistribution is bad, but it must be targeted, and conditional.

Only give it to poor people who
1. show potential to become productive
2. will not breed until they can support themselves and their offspring unaided

The poorest, most hopeless cases, the worst shitholes of the world, should be left to starve and suffer so badly that they won’t even want to reproduce, and just die off.

if you're only talking about USA
then i support the idea of min wage becoming a living wage
but, then,
how exactly do you expect America to be even able (let alone willing) to fix (or exacerbate) the problem of (any) other countries having starving-to-death-people
if you expect (or even want) the USA to do something that makes people in the rest of the world die (so they can't immigrate to here) what-the-fuck exactly do you think America is actually capable of doing??

if you look at the mis-shaped food that never reaches store shelves
added to the food that rots on store shelves
added to the food that rots in people's refrigerators
added to the food in McDonald's trashcans when people order more food than they're going to eat
all this added together and what you have is this
the United States of America alone manufactures enough food to feed every fucking human on the entire fucking planet

the reason you see those fucking commercials about how you can feed a child in Africa for the cost of a cup of coffee
if because of corrupt food-ministers
people who have the job-description of feeding their country who are failing at their job
because they are corrupt enough that they are just pocketing the American money that should be spent turning Africa into farmland

if you look at the mis-shaped food that never reaches store shelves
added to the food that rots on store shelves
added to the food that rots in people's refrigerators
added to the food in McDonald's trashcans when people order more food than they're going to eat
all this added together and what you have is this
the United States of America alone manufactures enough food to feed every fucking human on the entire fucking planet

you wanna feed Africa?
just get a fucking jet and just fly food over there

if any of @arg 's paycheck leaves America, it doesn't fucking feed anyone, it just lines the pocket of a corrupt "food minister"

i honestly want the United States to be able to institute some kind of "you're not allowed to breed until..." thing
where broke people in the United States are somehow temporarily sterilized until they stop being broke

 

[Blurry_Dreams]

@HamburgerBoy
if you want to get rid of people immigrating to America
get rid of "anchor babies"
both my parents, all 4 of my grandparents, and all 8 of my great-grand-parents were born in the USA
so when i see a pregnant woman cross the fucking border for the purpose of giving birth in America,
i don't view that kid as an American
what you need to have is ICE agents at the American hospitals
where if the mom wasn't born in America, then ICE agents show up at the hospital to deport the baby
this is how you get rid of the immigration problem

 

[Blurry_Dreams]

@CiG
trans-gendered people are trying to do sports so fucking much that this Wikipedia page somehow exists
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_people_in_sports

 

[Blurry_Dreams]

the school district in San Francisco used to teach the difference between gay people and straight people as part of the curriculum for kindergarten

i'm not sure if i agree or disagree with this being right or wrong
just pointing it out as a thing that was happening

 

[Einherjar86]

1. Ok?

You said that capitalism doesn't need competition, but creates it. I inferred that you meant it couldn't be both.

2. Up to the 1950s yeah it happened to varying extents for varying reasons (in the 1910s Woody liked to invade Latin American nations just to protect industry whereas the CIA-fueled coup in Iran in the 50s was as much geopolitical as it was to protect BP), but that's not really true anymore. Even under Hugo Chavez as he nationalized oil fields and other natural resources with Western stakes, we never applied any real sanctions. The world economy is so large that it frankly doesn't matter to us how some countries choose to run their economies, because there are dozens of other alternatives. And the reason we're in that state today is thanks to an international shift towards neoliberal policies in the 70s and beyond.

I'll concede that this may be true in some cases; but the US embargo on Cuba remains in effect and is the longest-standing trade embargo, if I'm not mistaken. The red scare might be long gone (although it isn't really, because the geriatrics on Fox still shake their canes at it), but its international effects haven't faded away.

3. I don't know what you mean by even distribution of products. Capitalists distribute products according to the extent of customers to pay for them. Capitalists compete by delivering more product for less customer money relative to the next capitalist. Capitalism doesn't require poverty, though certainly the more poverty that exists (i.e. the lower the standard of living), the cheaper the labor. For socially-defective nations that intentionally keep their populations in poverty, yeah capitalists can exploit that, but that's only because it's one-sided capitalism. The fundamental problem comes from their governments.

Capitalist production naturally tends toward disparity and inequality. This is neither good nor bad; it's just an effect of the system. Accumulation is like an avalanche. Barring significant external interference, it just keeps going. It's easier to make money once you have money. This pulls resources from other areas and leads to relative inequality.

You're right that capitalism doesn't need poverty in order to exist, but it tends toward poverty unless mediating steps are taken. This has been the case of history since the dawn of industrialism, without exception. It's possible to ameliorate the issue, but those who benefit from capitalist accumulation tend to resist that option.

Except borders are generally agreed-upon by entire governments, many of which are representative and follow the desires of the people. Murder only takes a single individual to commit on their own free will for it to exist, the state of murder is brief, and governments and populations alike generally work together to reduce murder as much as possible. He's asking an obvious rhetorical question in response to libs that parrot "Bridges not walls" without even considering the massive value backed by millennia of history behind borders.

That doesn't change the fact, however, that the logic of the statement contains a fallacy--i.e. that since something's been around for a long time it must be good.

Also, there are plenty of examples we can use that don't fall into the "individual act" category of murder. "If slavery is such a terrible thing, then why did it exist in the first place?" Slavery was agreed-upon by countries, by societies, and by governments. It's just a stupid argument, plain and simple.

That's true, but I keep providing numbers with context and relevance to the conversation. You're behaving like a creationist being exposed to carbon dating results.

You presented numbers on a scenario for which I never argued. I don't care if my post didn't contain any stats, that's still a straw man on your part.

 

[Blurry_Dreams]

that since something's been around for a long time it must be good.

actually
there are cases where people say "since it's been around for so long, it must be bad"
such as people still bitching about slavery even though the black people's rights movement was called the "civil" rights movement because it happened on the 1 hundredth anniversary of the civil war

 

[Dak]

You presented numbers on a scenario for which I never argued. I don't care if my post didn't contain any stats, that's still a straw man on your part.

Well you're welcome to provide scenarios instead of feel good vagueries and unsubstantiated claims about national or global wealth. I specifically addressed the cost of illegals and the cost of the permanently indigent citizens to show that your support for a rainy day fund doesn't even come close to matching the reality or the costs that "social programs" and a non-militarized border are saddled with. If your response to that is to eliminate them, that would be somewhat consistent with the idea of rainy day funds or starter packs. If you're not comfortable with these changes, then your wall of text about said rainy day fund etc. fails to represent your beliefs/position. We don't have a large rainy day problem in the US, that's generally covered by Unemployment Insurance and Medical Insurance. We have a growing population of human liabilities due to a variety of contributors. This is, essentially, the Dire Problem.

https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2009/11/dire-problem-and-virtual-option/

Stated most boldly, the Dire Problem is that there is a line of productive competence beneath which a human being is a liability, not an asset, to the society including him. This calculation is made in terms of the marginal human—does California gain or lose by adding one person just like this person? For millions, the answer is surely the latter.

Worse, with the steady advance of technology, this line rises. That is: the demand for low-skilled human labor shrinks. Abstract economics provides no guarantee whatsoever that the marginal able-bodied man with an IQ of 80 can feed himself by his own labors. If you doubt this line, simply lower it until you doubt it no more. At least logically, there is a biological continuum between humans and chimpanzees, and the latter are surely liabilities.

Why does this matter? It matters because either (a) a man can feed himself, or (b) he dies horribly of starvation, or (c) someone else feeds him. If (a), he is an asset. If (c), he is a liability—to someone. If (b), he makes a horrible mess and fuss while dying, and is thus in that sense a liability. Moreover, the presence of the poor becomes extremely unpleasant well before the starvation point.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

You said that capitalism doesn't need competition, but creates it. I inferred that you meant it couldn't be both.

I'll concede that this may be true in some cases; but the US embargo on Cuba remains in effect and is the longest-standing trade embargo, if I'm not mistaken. The red scare might be long gone (although it isn't really, because the geriatrics on Fox still shake their canes at it), but its international effects haven't faded away.

Capitalist production naturally tends toward disparity and inequality. This is neither good nor bad; it's just an effect of the system. Accumulation is like an avalanche. Barring significant external interference, it just keeps going. It's easier to make money once you have money. This pulls resources from other areas and leads to relative inequality.

You're right that capitalism doesn't need poverty in order to exist, but it tends toward poverty unless mediating steps are taken. This has been the case of history since the dawn of industrialism, without exception. It's possible to ameliorate the issue, but those who benefit from capitalist accumulation tend to resist that option.

The Cuba embargo remains for 100% political reasons; the party to end it loses Florida in the following presidential election. And the reason for beginning it was less ideological and more that they were an enemy during the Cold War and the USSR was filling them up with missiles.

Not particularly. Many of the wealthiest companies today have only existed for a few decades, i.e. it's innovation in tech that makes people and businesses rich. This applies both domestically (Google, Facebook, Uber, etc) and internationally (Tencent, Huawei, etc). Even during the infamous Gilded Age the median worker saw their real wages triple, despite the government actively valuing private contracts over their own power. I'd like to hear one example where unbridled capitalism created poverty. I'd imagine they're mostly either tainted with government interference (e.g. the Corn Laws and other protectionist efforts) or due to inadvertent effects (e.g. the Bhopal disaster, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, etc) which were damaging for all parties and certainly not a desired result of any capitalist.

That doesn't change the fact, however, that the logic of the statement contains a fallacy--i.e. that since something's been around for a long time it must be good.

Also, there are plenty of examples we can use that don't fall into the "individual act" category of murder. "If slavery is such a terrible thing, then why did it exist in the first place?" Slavery was agreed-upon by countries, by societies, and by governments. It's just a stupid argument, plain and simple.

"Good" is a value statement and has no bearing on logic without some premise defining and substantiating it. To anyone asking why slavery existed if it's such a bad thing now, there are answers. There were a lot of good reasons for slavery; it was profitable, it was relatively simple and regimented, it kept the bottom castes subjugated and unwilling to fight back, etc. They aren't good enough to compensate for other reasons that various liberal reformists brought to light and justify today, but it's pretty obvious why slavery was a foundation of society for most of its written history. Morrissey gave reasons why he supports borders, so if people are going claim that walls exist to be torn down, it's a valid question to know what changed today to justify ending a well-established custom.

 

[Einherjar86]

Well you're welcome to provide scenarios instead of feel good vagueries and unsubstantiated claims about national or global wealth. I specifically addressed the cost of illegals and the cost of the permanently indigent citizens to show that your support for a rainy day fund doesn't even come close to matching the reality or the costs that "social programs" and a non-militarized border are saddled with. If your response to that is to eliminate them, that would be somewhat consistent with the idea of rainy day funds or starter packs. If you're not comfortable with these changes, then your wall of text about said rainy day fund etc. fails to represent your beliefs/position. We don't have a large rainy day problem in the US, that's generally covered by Unemployment Insurance and Medical Insurance. We have a growing population of human liabilities due to a variety of contributors.

Wonderful! Then my rainy day fund can be directed toward more important concerns.

This is, essentially, the Dire Problem.

https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2009/11/dire-problem-and-virtual-option/

I thought this was a term of art, but it turns out...no. You cite this as though it's substantiated by a community of researchers and/or intellectuals, but it's actually just the whimsical rantings of an online blogger (kinda similar to this thread, I guess).

@HamburgerBoy (and Dak): it takes me too much time to respond to multiple people back and forth for days. You both raise good points, and I can keep coming back with responses; but I think it's simpler to say that we're discussing complex problems and, at the end of the day, all that really comes out of these discussions is that they're complex, and we don't agree on them.

 

[Dak]

I thought this was a term of art, but it turns out...no. You cite this as though it's substantiated by a community of researchers and/or intellectuals, but it's actually just the whimsical rantings of an online blogger (kinda similar to this thread, I guess).

Nice appeal to authority you found there. Referencing the rest of your post yes, it's the complex problem.

Also, as far as the blogger goes, he's not some basement dweller, although he's a "wrongthinker":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin

Yarvin's parents and stepfather were career officers in United States Foreign Service.[25] At age 12 he returned from abroad to attend public high school in Columbia, Maryland.[26] Yarvin attended college at Johns Hopkins and Brown University (undergrad) and UC Berkeley (graduate student).

 

[Einherjar86]

I know who he is, believe me. He's a proto-dark enlightenment buffoon. But thanks for the wiki.

 

[arg]

@Blurry_Dreams
@Einherjar86
It doesn’t matter that some people/nations have more than enough money or more than enough food

If we give it to the wrong people (the ones who will eat it and shit it out and need more tomorrow and shit out babies) that’s like nurturing a farm of diseased rats

Mandatory sterilization, while I love the idea, it provides immediate positive results, will be too difficult to implement politically

Stop helping all foreign poor
Help the local deserving poor yea ok
Stop helping local undeserving poor
Enjoy lower taxes
Have a smarter, more attractive, more prosperous population