individualism agorism capitalism objectivism reason - claster of icons, including some of the ones you hold dear. Not followed by anyone you’re following.
The Intellectual Desert
Joined June 2009
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Do people who want to "solve" world hunger with direct cash understand that the effort would increase the number of people in the world who go hungry?
Partly, because, assuming you spent enough to have real global influence, it would increase the number of people in the world without doing a thing for productive capacity.
But that is far from the only mechanism. It would spike food prices. It would spike transportation costs. It would create vast networks of middlemen, skimmers, and political corruption.
And then when your money finally ran out, when your global bubble burst, it would cause a worldwide economic crash.
Communist countries that fail aren't real communism, but fascism that "works" is real communism.
American cosplay communists love pointing to China as a success story.
There's just one embarrassing detail.
China became substantially more prosperous after abandoning much of Mao's economic model and embracing private enterprise, profits, investment, and market competition.
Meanwhile, the Communist Party retains authoritarian control over the economy, making its system resemble fascist corporatism in important respects.
So their communist success story depends on capitalist economic reforms operating under an authoritarian state.
Quite the advertisement for communism.
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Zombies are pure, ravenous, insatiable consumption. They can't be reasoned with, they're not even rational enough to respond to threats. They can't think past whatver meat is right in front of them, and their endless need.
The only difference between zombies and communists is that zombies don't lie.
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Kyle Bennett retweeted
Instead of pretending to give me this choice on X, why don’t you repeal the income tax and actually give everyone this choice?
Kyle Bennett retweeted
If Fauxcohantas redefines your honest work as cheating and scamming because you have money she wants, here's your warning.
Don't worry, once she finds the person(s), she'll find the crime.
"Rule of law" is where you get to make a-priori concrete decisions about concrete actions that are performed in concrete contexts that don't actually exist yet.
It's where you get to hand-wave "full-context" away completely. It's why law books run to hundreds of thousands or maybe even millions of pages, because every case whose context wasn't addressed in the previous attempts at a-priori law requires taking even more guesses about contexts that don't exist yet.
And somehow, Objectivists love it.
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Kyle Bennett retweeted
Ever notice how these trope posts have to be carefully worded so that it compares *an* employee and *a* CEO? And an hour vs a year? All to make the discrepancy as dramatic as possible.
The honest comparison, the one you make when you're not trying to decieve people, is $25 per hour for ~2000 hours a year times the number of full time employees, all against one CEO's annual salary.
But for a company with 1000 employees, the real, honest comparison would be: paying employees $50 million vs paying the CEO $25 million.
For 10K employees: it is a question of paying the employees half a billion vs paying the CEO $25 million.
For McDonalds, it is a question of paying the CEO $25 million vs paying the employees $7.5 *billion*.
And the even the McDonald's CEO does't make $25 million, even with bonuses and incentives.
Kyle Bennett retweeted
No, you want your NGO's back so you can get a board position and salary after you leave congress. That's where this money will go, all in cute little envelopes with pictures of babies on them.
We're at the stage of AI and AI tools where computers were when we thought plugging a cassette player into a serial port to save our files was a mind-blowing, cutting edge wonder. It's not *even* to the point where computers were when beeps and screeches over the phone was the mind-blowing cutting-edge wonder.
The difference is, computers themselves are far, far beyond that stage, and AI has access to them. They have a shitload of leverage for a temperamental 3 year-old that needs a nap.
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Kyle Bennett retweeted
Monopoly wasn’t designed to show how capitalism works. It was made in 1904 as political propaganda for a government land tax.
And look at its rules: nothing is produced, the land is fixed, and the bank prints $200 every lap.
That’s not capitalism. That’s a fiat economy printer with no innovation.
Kyle Bennett retweeted
This is actually true. But capitalism has your back. It makes people who only care about getting rich have to make or do something you want or need.
Kyle Bennett retweeted
So you want to get rich without improving anyone else's life? If you trade anything at all, you are making the other person richer as well as yourself.
Even before we get to the dumb idea of "tax the billionaires", thinking that billionaires are hoarding money is not just a profoundly stupid idea, the complaint implies a morally repugnant premise.
I know that it is not just people innocently mistaking capitalism for the US's very mixed and unfree economy, because, for decades, whenever I argue for free markets without labeling it "capitalism", I get the exact same arguments back.
It's the "free" that socialists hate, not the "capital". And they have for at least my entire adult life.
Believing the pie is fixed is no way to go through life. You can't imagine what that is costing you.
You CANNOT have hyperwealth without hyperpoverty. A billionaire exists in one country because child labor exists in another.
Stock markets grow by looting countries raw. That’s the reality of capitalism: the misanthropic greed of the rich is fed by devastating the poor.
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