21–30 of 101 posts
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Can you explain the causal link between those rich people's greed and this fishing technique? Is it because rich people enabled dynamite to be produced cheaply enough for them?
It's because "richness" creates a pathologically competitive social system that encourages this sort of destruction activity in order to get the token that conveys value.
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Many rich people are rich because they employ people and profit from it. Many rich people are rich because they own real wealth and not (just) money. Rich people are not the problem. Rich people are no excuse for doing bad things. Poverty is no excuse for doing bad things. Deficient morality leads to bad actions and bad constraints. Change requires change. Understanding who and what to blame is an improvement. Becomi…
So true, yet we largely agree that the broadest shoulders should beat the largest load... ie. progressive taxes. We should do more of that to fight poverty, as that will hopefully mitigate things like this.
I don’t believe these problems are solvable in the strict sense, but they are fun to critique.
In a world where 8 people have more money than the bottom 3 BILLION people combined. You can blame the poor for surviving...or blame the rich for the greed that forces people to do this to survive.
If half the wealth is tied up in 8 people who could not possibly spend it, what do you think would happen to the earth's natural resources if it were suddenly dumped on the bottom 3 billion? It would be a huge boon to the economy at first, until we burnt through every resource.
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So true, yet we largely agree that the broadest shoulders should beat the largest load... ie. progressive taxes. We should do more of that to fight poverty, as that will hopefully mitigate things like this.
Thanks. I agree that we should have the morality to defend Human Rights and to not tolerate poverty. Unfortunately no state in the world respects the Human Rights for its citizens. http://www.un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/human-rights/ IMO not progressive taxes but progressive economics and progressive politics should be implemented. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2X_Ywepzm46_uGJDfRjYeQ/vid... IMO in a perfect w…
It is unfortunate that how the world is conducted at any point in time is largely a result of the choices of those with the most power to bring about their desires.
So it has always been and so shall it always be.
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So true, yet we largely agree that the broadest shoulders should beat the largest load... ie. progressive taxes. We should do more of that to fight poverty, as that will hopefully mitigate things like this.
I’d argue: the problem with progressive taxes is ... ok, the problem with taxes as a means of wealth transfer is it puts the money in the hands of politicians, who are themselves already wealthy, to spend on behalf of their drinking buddies. I don’t believe these problems are solvable in the strict sense, but they are fun to critique.
Edit: spelling.
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I’d argue: the problem with progressive taxes is ... ok, the problem with taxes as a means of wealth transfer is it puts the money in the hands of politicians, who are themselves already wealthy, to spend on behalf of their drinking buddies. I don’t believe these problems are solvable in the strict sense, but they are fun to critique.
Sometimes you just have to fight even though you expect to lose. Edit: spelling.
As a stereotypically apathetic Australian: those who can be bothered fighting the good fight certainly have my supportive clicks!
This is a fairly big abstraction, but we live in a world system that's based on discounting unseen externalities; sweeping the hurt under the rug, so to speak. The world-system started with the theft of the American continent and perpetual genocide of the natives, continued with the mass industrialized kidnapping from Africa, and persists today in a cyberpunk, abstracted form that some call "capitalism." There isn't…
This is ridiculous. We live in a generally improving world with declining global poverty, declining child mortality, declining war etc etc. There are still tons of problems but I don’t think such a pessimistic outlook is useful to solving them. We should look for concrete political and technological solutions.
I thin you're unknowingly validating OP thesis. All the improvements you mention are directly affecting mankind. But at what costs did we get these immediate improvements? What are the externalities?
At some points, they will have direct, dire consequences on human life. You're probably aware of climate change already (we talk a lot about this, but it's getting worse), but our focus will switch to ecological collapse.
"We will see mass extinctions that undermine human well-being". https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03891-1
Here in Europe, we've already lost 30% of birds' populations, and 80% of insects in 30 years. The loss is accelerating fast.
Now, is it possible that the effects of climate change and loss of biodiversity can exceed the improvements you've mentioned initially? Can you discard this hypothesis?
When I think the human race cannot sink any lower, then I am brought back to reality.
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I’d argue: the problem with progressive taxes is ... ok, the problem with taxes as a means of wealth transfer is it puts the money in the hands of politicians, who are themselves already wealthy, to spend on behalf of their drinking buddies. I don’t believe these problems are solvable in the strict sense, but they are fun to critique.
Sometimes you just have to fight even though you expect to lose. Edit: spelling.
Who am I kidding, I simply gave up on getting people to know the difference between "loose" and "lose".