Capitalism: A Love Story

[Patrick Degan]

Oh dear... It appears that it shall actually be necessary to explain the Social Contract to Comical Axi. I see he also still prefers to argue from his little world of Black/White absolutes.

[ray245]

Oh dear... It appears that it shall actually be necessary to explain the Social Contract to Comical Axi. I see he also still prefers to argue from his little world of Black/White absolutes.

Hell, he doesn't even have any idea in regards to how society works at all. Everything he has is essentially taken for granted.

I really have to wonder if things like social contract has been taught to people in high school and etc.

Axis, you might want to look up on wikipedia what is social contract all about.

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

[K. A. Pital]

I don't accept that there is any valid moral requirement to ensure that every citizen in this country enjoys a minimum standard of living.

This argument is a form of the argument that human life does not have value in and of itself. Regardless of the criterion you make defining as having enough value to ensure support, material foremost, some humans will fall outside this criterion. They will be dehumanized by your moral system and deprived of the same worth as other humans that you consider "worthy" of a minimal standard of living.

The group dehumanization that your statement implies, Kast, is enough grounds to consider it damaging to society in a practical sense and being inadequate in a moral sense.

Your statement, Kast, quite obviously defies utilitarianism. Even a cursory objective evaluation of moral systems demonstrates that utilitarianism is probably the most advanced and centered around the well-being of the greatest number of sentient beings. What other system could remotely compare with it and justify such statemens as yours? I don't know.

[Surlethe]

What other system could remotely compare with it and justify such statemens as yours? I don't know.

A libertarian moral system which centers around the obedience of various rules regarding property rights. For example, one of my professors avers that an individual who cannot pay the costs associated with living does not deserve to live.

[Anguirus]

^ There are intellectual professionals who seriously argue that?!

...wow.

[Samuel]

What other system could remotely compare with it and justify such statemens as yours? I don't know.

A libertarian moral system which centers around the obedience of various rules regarding property rights. For example, one of my professors avers that an individual who cannot pay the costs associated with living does not deserve to live.

And that breaks down on why people who don't have property should obey the rules. Lets not forget that it is ironic coming from a country that got its land by taking it from people whose property rights it didn't respect.

^ There are intellectual professionals who seriously argue that?!

...wow.

Professorship doesn't guarentee sanity. Hidenburg supported the Nazi's for instance.

[Thanas]

^Who do you mean?

[Samuel]

^Who do you mean?

Hindenburg

Sorry about the spelling. Involved in physics, the Nazi atom bomb- that guy.

[Thanas]

Hindenburg was a general.

You probably mean Heisenberg, but he was no Nazi at all.

[Surlethe]

What other system could remotely compare with it and justify such statemens as yours? I don't know.

A libertarian moral system which centers around the obedience of various rules regarding property rights. For example, one of my professors avers that an individual who cannot pay the costs associated with living does not deserve to live.

And that breaks down on why people who don't have property should obey the rules. Lets not forget that it is ironic coming from a country that got its land by taking it from people whose property rights it didn't respect.

Well, he'd say that it's the government's job to enforce contracts and property rights and too fucking bad if you're going to starve to death - you should have made yourself more valuable to other people.

^ There are intellectual professionals who seriously argue that?!

...wow.

Sure. You ever had an extended stay in an economics department? The entire profession is relatively libertarian, and the professor in particular I'm talking about is Austrian.

[Imperial Overlord]

Sure. You ever had an extended stay in an economics department? The entire profession is relatively libertarian, and the professor in particular I'm talking about is Austrian.

Depends on the university in question. The economics department at the university I went to is fairly leftist.