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david starling

Well-known member
In a fair economic context, pursuing your own economic interests will inevitably benefit those around you. That is one of the principles of capitalism. If you make a lot of money, you will eventually spend it or invest it, providing jobs for other people.

What about tax deductions based on how many jobs you provide?
 

waybread

Well-known member
There's no "morality" in politics. It's just about getting elected in order to enrich yourself, your cronies, and whoever makes the most donations. That goes for the Right-wingers as well.

David, that works in many countries. In the USA, it's known as fraud, bribery, racketeering, graft and/or corruption, and is an offense that often carries prison time. Just ask the recent governors of Illinois.
 

waybread

Well-known member
Yes so you don't talk about what is inconvinient for your stance correct?

I asked if what the man did was racist, still no answer.

Black man takes picture with his knee on a white baby. Tags a slogan for a race-based political movement. But lets not talk about that, cause its inconvinient for the leftist cause lol.
:sleeping:

Sorry, Dirius-- which post was that? :innocent:

We can carry on a meaningful conversation about racism in the US after you've read the educational links I've posted for your benefit. I just want you to be up to speed.

Re: the photo: this is from my post #441

Dirius, of course that shouldn't have happened. But most of us don't feel the need to belabor that it shouldn't have happened. When we say we're against violence, we mean it. We don't see the need to itemize it.

I think it's funny that you use all those emoticons.
 
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waybread

Well-known member
In a fair economic context, pursuing your own economic interests will inevitably benefit those around you. That is one of the principles of capitalism. If you make a lot of money, you will eventually spend it or invest it, providing jobs for other people.

A good quote from the Robber Barons, as they stepped on the backs of the poor.

But you essentially espouse the old "trickle-down economics." Which has shown time and again not to work. It's based on an outmoded manufacturing model of the economy.

Today many of the wealthiest Americans do not invest in businesses that create jobs for workers. They offshore their assets to tropical island nations with lucrative tax dodges. Or they invest in hedge funds. Or they retire early and live a life of leisure. You may have noticed that their cleaning staff and groundskeepers don't make a lot of money.

Oftentimes in a well-developed industry (such as clothing manufacturing,) this industry won 't make more profits through more creative innovation or by expanding its management. It makes more profits through a "scramble to the bottom" for the cheapest wages-- on the planet. So jobs get offshored as well, to deeply impoverished countries where people (often teenage girls) work for very little money, often in hazardous conditions.

I could go on in this fashion, but you've probably had enough rebuttals already.
 

Dirius

Well-known member
A good quote from the Robber Barons, as they stepped on the backs of the poor.
When you seek to produce goods and make a profit, you fulfill the needs of the market.

Any person who has ever worked in the private sector understands this.

Most who live off a government job on tax-payer money, do not.

But you essentially espouse the old "trickle-down economics." Which has shown time and again not to work. It's based on an outmoded manufacturing model of the economy.

Today many of the wealthiest Americans do not invest in businesses that create jobs for workers. They offshore their assets to tropical island nations with lucrative tax dodges. Or they invest in hedge funds. Or they retire early and live a life of leisure. You may have noticed that their cleaning staff and groundskeepers don't make a lot of money.

Oftentimes in a well-developed industry (such as clothing manufacturing,) this industry won 't make more profits through more creative innovation or by expanding its management. It makes more profits through a "scramble to the bottom" for the cheapest wages-- on the planet. So jobs get offshored as well, to deeply impoverished countries where people (often teenage girls) work for very little money, often in hazardous conditions.

I could go on in this fashion, but you've probably had enough rebuttals already.

I love the absurdity of this post.

It answers itself by showing that high taxation, wage laws and regulations, are directly responsible for lowering investments and job opportunities in any given country. Big LOL.

It later assumes those teenage girls were much better off and earning more money, when they were working from dusk till dawn in the farms, had no single luxury, or even running water.

:w00t::w00t::w00t:
 
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AppLeo

Well-known member
So it is, AppVirgo.

omg, i should've had my username as CapLeo

Nah, you'll just be a right-wing thief.

I'm too rich to even think about stealing from others lele

What would a proper sense of morality* look like to you?

(*def. values, telling right from wrong. Not right from left.)

There is one essential virtue that an individual must practice in order to be considered good.

That virtue is rationality.

Rationality is accepting and using reason as one's only means of knowledge and guide to action. All other virtues essentially stem from this one virtue. There are six other main virtues worth noting.

Independence - using one's own reason, not relying on the minds of others to act in the world.

Honesty - staying committed to the facts regardless how uncomfortable or unbearable they are

Integrity - Comitting to the proper actions after one has determined what is correct with their reason

Productivity - Acting in a way that generates what is required to sustain and flourish in life

Pride - recognizing that you are the highest value, that you deserve happiness what is best for you, and you are a constantly striving to be your best self. Being morally ambitious, relentlessly pursuing virtue.

The only way for people to be rational is if they are left alone. If they are free to think and act for themselves under their own judgement. Reason is volitional and something that an individual must decide act upon himself. No one can do it for him. In other words, we need a political system of individual rights, and free market capitalism. Without this structure in place, people cannot hold reason as an absolute. Or on the flip side, irrational people choose a political system that goes against their freedom to choose reason.
 
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david starling

Well-known member
An economic system based on a vice*, won't have virtuous results. It's an impossibility. But, if one uses enough theoretical rationalization, it can be made to appear that, in theory, it could be otherwise.

*(Greed is a vice.)
 
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Dirius

Well-known member
Came across this article and thought it seemed made for this thread:

"If Black lives matter to you and you want to be an ally, you have to take a stand against white solidarity, even when it means calling out racially insensitive posts your friends or family share on Facebook."

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/speak-out-family-racist-posts_l_5f0f3ee4c5b65426947a26e6

Yet another example of activists attempt to destroy the nuclear family.

"Get your friends and family canceled in the name of the movement".

Sell your brothers and sisters, your parents and grandparents, your chilren and grandchildren to the mob so their lives can get ruined.
 
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Osamenor

Staff member
Removing this post, which was shared with good intentions and got twisted. This was a mistake.

I didn't get to read the article you linked to yet. Do you mind resharing? I would love to get my own perspective on whatever it says.

Edit: I've clicked the link in Dirius's quote of your post and I'm reading it now.
 
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Osamenor

Staff member
Yet another example of activists attempt to destroy the nuclear family.

"Get your friends and family canceled in the name of the movement".

Sell your brothers and sisters, your parents and grandparents, your chilren and grandchildren to the mob so their lives can get ruined.

Dirius, did you even read the article?

It says the opposite of what you're claiming. How is this getting your friends and family canceled?
There’s nothing wrong with taking breaks from engaging with your friends or family if they’re posting things that are upsetting. But try to reengage ― and recognize that you can unfollow someone and still commit to having a conversation with them, said George James, a marriage and family therapist and a professor at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.

“You can hold them accountable but you don’t have to cut off from them,” he said. “You can send them a text saying that you didn’t like their post and you thought it was offensive.”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/speak-out-family-racist-posts_l_5f0f3ee4c5b65426947a26e6

Accountability doesn't mean lack of love and certainly doesn't mean lack of loyalty. The way I see it, it's absolutely a sign of family loyalty to want to still engage with your family members even if they're saying ugly things. And to be honest with them.

As for the "break white solidarity" part, yes, it says that, but the "white solidarity" they're talking about is a false solidarity. It doesn't help white people. It's not like people who are genuinely being oppressed standing in solidarity against the oppressors. (You could make a case for lower class white people needing solidarity against classism, but that's class based, not race based, and it's a solidarity that can and should be shared with black and brown folks who are in the same boat.)

The "white solidarity" we're being advised to break is really white supremacy. Not in the sense of neo-Nazis or white separatists--that's the extreme version, which most white people don't go to (although the ranks of those who do are growing alarmingly in the age of Trump). I'm talking about the low level, subtle, pervasive white supremacy we live with all the time. The white supremacy that shapes the culture, certainly in America and in plenty of other places as well. The construction of whiteness itself.

Those of us who are counted as white could take pride in who we are without embracing all that. But there's a lot of untangling to do.
 

Osamenor

Staff member
Think about the legacy of your own ethnic group. Is it anything to be proud of? Can you take pride in the accomplishments of your own ancestors?

To me, it's a mixed bag. I have links in my family tree to several of the founding fathers and other known figures of colonial and post revolutionary American history. I suppose you could say that's a legacy of pride. I'm also aware of some particularly good things some of my closer ancestors have done. Definitely a legacy of pride.

I also have to acknowledge the fact that one whole side of my family participated in slavery and profited from it. And that some of the financial advantage gained from that passed down to my generation, while the descendants of those who actually did the work did not inherit the profits. Those people may even be my (distant) cousins, considering the well known propensity among slave owners for knocking up their female slaves. I have no actual knowledge of the men in my family having done that, but it wouldn't surprise me if at least a few of them did. And then there were a few Indian killers in other parts of the family tree, which is a whole other issue....

But it's not disloyal to my family to say those things. It's not lack of pride in who I am. It's ancestor work.
 
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