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You're a Slave to Money, Then You Die

churchlifejournal.nd.edu

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Re: You're a Slave to Money, Then You Die

#91

Post by lonelappde »

eru wrote: post #36
deathhand wrote: post #25

Government was always supposed to be influenced 'by the people' those people are usually aristocrats. That is fine if there are enough of them with different ideas. What has happened is the consolidation of the artiscroacy and thus the means of influence of government. This is where we are getting our ugly problems from. What is the first step to fixing this? Bring voting into the 21ST century AND NOT HAVE VOTING SOF…

Voting is inherently aristocratic. Sortition gets you democracy. At least according to some Greeks and Frenchmen ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition#Democratic ): > The idea that democracy is associated with sortition remained common in the 18th century. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu writes in The Spirit of the Laws, "The suffrage by lot is natural to democracy, as that by choice is to aristocracy."

Greek sortition used the aristocracy as its population for selecting leaders.

Re: You're a Slave to Money, Then You Die

#92

Post by clarry »

foldr wrote: post #77
RHSeeger wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They could have chosen simpler individual words And they should have. I can put together a sentence using a lot of words most people won't know. It will be a valid sentence, and it will mean what I want it to mean, but a lot of people won't be able to understand what I intended it to mean.

It's so easy to look words up in a dictionary these days, but for some reason the tech community likes to take a perverse pride in reading at an 8th grade level. "How dare you use a word that happens not to be in my limited vocabulary?"

Same goes for their attitude towards programming languages. How dare you propose a language that I can't read without studying / become productive with in a weekend. How dare you propose using characters that can't be written without an IME on a US-ASCII keyboard.

I find it quite disappointing.

(I've been reading a lot about the APL family lately..)

Re: You're a Slave to Money, Then You Die

#93

Post by tomrod »

scroot wrote: post #79
antepodius wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People trading 'things' like favours is pretty natural in that it happens easily. And it's not like the waters of the world are pure and safe to drink by default. There's plenty of parasites and diseases out there. How many hunter-gatherers do you think didn't have worms?

> People trading 'things' like favours is pretty natural in that it happens easily The author seems less concerned with what "happens easily" than with what is taken as a kind of natural law. The dominant ideology of the present (for which he is presenting an intellectual history) supposes that market forces are this natural law. It is this supposition that cannot stand up to long term history. We are better off read…

Oldest anthropological sites in the world appear to have been used for religious ceremony (community building) and trade (economics). The economists aren't terribly off the mark.

This article seems to want to return to a pseudo-Rousseau view of the world where the wilds are religious.

Re: You're a Slave to Money, Then You Die

#94

Post by hudibras »

tomrod wrote: post #88
dangus wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m looking for your substantive comment on the article but I haven’t found it yet. Pot, kettle, etc. And I realize the irony in the fact that my pointing this out to you is the main subject of my not-substantive comment. However, I won’t resort to accusing you of being simple minded, as I wouldn’t call someone who couldn’t make it though an article like this simple minded either. The concepts and history presented a…

100% agree. Flowery prose has its place, but an article calling on a return to traditionalism and denouncing the benefits of neoliberalism isn't it. Doubly on-the-nose is that the article would be inaccessible to many due to being steeped in elitism.

>the article would be inaccessible to many due to being steeped in elitism.

Inaccessible to who exactly?

Re: You're a Slave to Money, Then You Die

#96

Post by scroot »

foldr wrote: post #87
Retric wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hoi polloi is a redundant phrase that’s intended to hide the simplicity of the idea. It’s simply lazy writing to mask lazy thinking.

I don't think so. It's chosen because it reflects a particular attitude towards the working classes. (The hoi polloi don't call themselves the hoi polloi.) It's also not in any way an obscure phrase. In the UK at least it's in common usage.

Correct. To put it another way: he is choosing this word because he is arguing that those in power (neoliberals) view common people as unsophisticated rabble who cannot and should not be making important decisions. It is not the author's view, but one emblematic of the very target of his criticism.

Re: You're a Slave to Money, Then You Die

#97

Post by lonelappde »

foldr wrote: post #77
RHSeeger wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They could have chosen simpler individual words And they should have. I can put together a sentence using a lot of words most people won't know. It will be a valid sentence, and it will mean what I want it to mean, but a lot of people won't be able to understand what I intended it to mean.

It's so easy to look words up in a dictionary these days, but for some reason the tech community likes to take a perverse pride in reading at an 8th grade level. "How dare you use a word that happens not to be in my limited vocabulary?"

I'll follow George Orwell's advice over yours, thanks.

httpp://www.openculture.com/2016/05/george-orwells-six-rules-for-writing-clear-and-tight-prose.html

Re: You're a Slave to Money, Then You Die

#98

Post by Retric »

foldr wrote: post #87
Retric wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hoi polloi is a redundant phrase that’s intended to hide the simplicity of the idea. It’s simply lazy writing to mask lazy thinking.

I don't think so. It's chosen because it reflects a particular attitude towards the working classes. (The hoi polloi don't call themselves the hoi polloi.) It's also not in any way an obscure phrase. In the UK at least it's in common usage.

Coded language attempts to convey ideas through subtext. By doing so it’s reducing the carrying capacity of the information channel and lets authors pad words without adding meaning.

That’s more or less the definition of lazy writing. Like a kid starting off with “It was a dark and stormy night...”

Re: You're a Slave to Money, Then You Die

#99

Post by wayneftw »

hudibras wrote: post #66
peignoir wrote: post #6

It’s ad reductio it’s like saying soccer is pushing a ball. You could also say life is waking up eating sleeping and then death. It’s true but it’s definitely an emotional argument. I preferred the lectures on free will by Conway, it does not answer anything but it allows for a nice réflexion

In every HN comment section, there's always, 100% of the time, at least one person who only reads the title of the piece (in this case, a song lyric from The Verve) and still has the nerve to post a comment.

So what? The headline is dumb. Nothing wrong with pointing that out and saying why.

The fact that you say you read the article and this attack was your best comment... well I’d say one of these comments is basically worthless and it’s not the guy who pointed out the problem with the title.

Furthermore, a lot of people go to the comments first for a variety of reasons. Nothing wrong with that either.

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