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How To Make Trillions Of Dollars

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Re: How To Make Trillions Of Dollars

#91

Post by atsaloli »

rndmize wrote: post #40

Happiness, health and stability are not core objectives of our society. The production of wealth, as measured by GDP, or by the stock markets, or consumer spending, is our yardstick of success. I hope that in the remainder of the century we can can transition to better forms of society where the health and happiness of the general population is more important than the efficiency of our economic structures.

Witness Bhutan's Gross National Happiness: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_national_happiness

Re: How To Make Trillions Of Dollars

#92

Post by josephagoss »

orionblastar wrote: post #32

Only one way to make trillions of dollars, be born into the Rothschild family or marry into them. They are worth trillions and own banks and own a lot of nations' debts. Because they own a lot of debt, they charge huge interest rates on them, and profit from them a lot. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rothschild_family

I was under the impression that a Government sells a bond, with a interest rate the Government sets. How would the Rothschild family buy bonds (Government debt) and ask for a higher interest rate than that was set in the first place?

Re: How To Make Trillions Of Dollars

#93

Post by nazgulnarsil »

The article is a bit silly but there is an interesting tidbit. The observation that people can afford seemingly limitless trinkets that they don't really need while the necessities of life are quite expensive. Shouldn't something that literally everyone needs and thus is guaranteed a ubiquitous market and thus obscene rewards for innovation be cheap? Is there some iron rule of technology/market that says that innovations in these areas is impossible or prohibitively expensive?

There are multiple answers to this question, and I think it is worth meditating on.

Re: How To Make Trillions Of Dollars

#94

Post by jacques_chester »

tossacct wrote: post #88
jacques_chester wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You disagreed with the idea that society can have objectives based on philosophical grounds. I objected to the idea that an emergent phenomenon can be assumed to have objectives. Society wasn't "designed", it simply is . Teleology is the name for assigning human-like motives to things. For example, saying "the hamstring muscle is designed to flex the knee and extend the hip" is erroneous. There is no designer. It e…

Well now you've jumped off the boat into the frothy water, just like you said you wouldn't ;). Let me get us back in the boat. I agree that the definition of the concept of emergence is that there is no objective. No one even vaguely familiar with the concept could possibly disagree with that. My questions before were not disbelief, just making sure you had some passing familiarity with the concepts before I engaged…

Ah, I didn't realise that's what you were driving at.

Human-designed systems have a purpose. Otherwise, they wouldn't have been designed in the first place (hello, circular reasoning).

But they can also be viewed as emergent phenomena within the larger System of Everything.

If you want an example, how about an Olympic weightlifting barbell?

Its purpose is to facilitate the sport of weightlifting. Such bars are designed to exhibit properties such as flexing under load while returning to true, robustness to being dropped from overhead and having a collar spin with the right amount of resistance.

Weightlifting itself seems to have emerged from status plays between ancient greek men. "Hey Themistocles, I bet you can't lift this big rock!"

Which in turn emerges from status play, which emerges ... well. You get the idea. From the POV of "society", none of this was ever planned. From the POV of the people working for Eleiko, the bar is a piece of lovingly engineered and carefully manufactured high-grade steel.

Re: How To Make Trillions Of Dollars

#95

Post by justincormack »

pjzedalis wrote: post #75
nhaehnle wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And your proposal is? A lot of alternatives have been tried in the past several thousand years and almost all of them suck. Real hard. Don't think in terms of The Alternative System, just think in terms of the small things that can make life better. Things like reduced working hours to have more time for family, or better economic freedoms for everyone. Those things do not represent a change in The System. In particu…

If enough people say they are done with 40+ hour work weeks and only will do 35 companies will adapt. So far there has not been enough people willing to do so.

Welcome to Europe...

Re: How To Make Trillions Of Dollars

#96

Post by nacker »

jacques_chester wrote: post #53
grecy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> dash of conspiracy theories. It doesn't matter if it's a conspiracy or not, the fact is it's a reality of the world we live in. Acknowledgement of a problem is the first step to fixing it, or at the very least minimizing it's impact.

The conspiracy theory is central to the larger theory. If you believe that the world we live in has one, or a few, central intelligences directing how it has unfolded, then it's relatively easily changed. Find those people, usurp their levers of power. If it's bullshit and nobody anywhere has that kind of influence, then it's impossible to usurp the Secret Masters and use their mechanism. So. Yeah. It matters to the…

> it's relatively easily changed. Find those people, usurp their levers of power.

If it's so easy, could you please do us all a favor and usurp the levers of power of the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, and Goldman-Sachs to start with? Waiting patiently, thanks!

Re: How To Make Trillions Of Dollars

#98

Post by josh_fyi »

Note that people who are outside the American madhouse, those who live in developing countries like the Philippines or China, very much want to adopt American customs.

Few of them want to live a monastic or back-to-nature lifestyle. These people can learn from Americans' experience, yet there is no mass movement to adopt the good part while staying relaxed, centered, and happy.

I'm not saying that they prefer employer-linked healthcare to single-payer, or that they want to be stressed-out and depressed, but they very much want TV, possessions, yuppie-style jobs, etc., without worrying too much about the alleged misery that we Americans experience.

Re: How To Make Trillions Of Dollars

#99

Post by jacques_chester »

nacker wrote: post #96
jacques_chester wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The conspiracy theory is central to the larger theory. If you believe that the world we live in has one, or a few, central intelligences directing how it has unfolded, then it's relatively easily changed. Find those people, usurp their levers of power. If it's bullshit and nobody anywhere has that kind of influence, then it's impossible to usurp the Secret Masters and use their mechanism. So. Yeah. It matters to the…

> it's relatively easily changed. Find those people, usurp their levers of power. If it's so easy, could you please do us all a favor and usurp the levers of power of the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, and Goldman-Sachs to start with? Waiting patiently, thanks!

If it's unclear, I am not a supporter of the Secret Masters interpretation of history or modern society.

Re: How To Make Trillions Of Dollars

#100

Post by rbn »

dag11 wrote: post #21
rbn wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't. Its a person with too many first world problems and a dash of conspiracy theories. ( high level marketers created the world we live in...ect)

> (high level marketers created the world we live in...ect) But... they did. That's the entire idea behind marketing and consumerism. They're paid to make us need a certain product or service. It's not paranoia.

God Complex. It's impossible to narrow down the cause of today's complex society to the work of marketers.
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