On 31-12-2009 17:49, Warp wrote:
> andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
>>>   At least the racism part I view as completely ludicrous. 
> 
>> Ok fair enough. Seems like you find things that happen ludicrous. Not my 
>> problem.
> 
>   That would be a "cum hoc ergo propter hoc" fallacy, or in more mundane
> terms, "correlation implies causation" fallacy.
> 
>   The United States is a capitalist country. There is racism in the United
> States. Hence capitalism causes racism.
> 
>   Sorry, you fail.

No, sorry. I never said that capitalism causes racism. I think I won't 
mention that you again distorted a remark from someone else and tried to 
ridicule that. No point really.

>   Could you please point out a country where capitalism *demonstrably* has
> caused racism (because, in your own words, these things "happen"), rather
> than just both phenomena appearing in the same country without there
> necessarily being a direct correlation between the two?
> 
>   (And please don't tell me that you understood what I wrote as meaning
> "racism doesn't happen, that's ludicrous.")

I didn't understand that, so I won't tell that.

>>> Capitalism does
>>> not lead to racism any more than any other possible form of economy.  People
>>> will or will not be racists regardless of what the economic model of the
>>> country might happen to be. It's not like capitalism would somehow induce
>>> racism (while other economic models don't).
> 
>> totally irrelevant, because gregjohn did not make that claim.
> 
>   Of course he did. He talked about how capitalism and free commerce could
> lead to things like racist behavior. That was the whole point.
> 
>   If he didn't make that claim, then what did he claim, in your opinion?
> 

IMHO just that: if there is already racism, capitalism might lead to 
companies that capitalize on that.
I think in a later mail he said that he knew of instances where that 
actually happened. In his post that started this 'discussion' he did 
only said that in his opinion it would be a logical consequence.

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Jim Charter wrote:
> oblivious to the fact that they are not paying for someone else's kid's 
> education, they are paying back for their own.

That, and that having an educated population is good for them even if 
they're uneducated themselves. Sort of like how having enough people 
vaccinated protects those who aren't as well.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

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On 31-12-2009 18:09, Darren New wrote:

Darren, I think there is something wrong with the roles we play here. I 
though we were supposed to violently disagree on everything to entertain 
the lurkers.

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andrel wrote:
> On 31-12-2009 18:09, Darren New wrote:
> 
> Darren, I think there is something wrong with the roles we play here. I 
> though we were supposed to violently disagree on everything to entertain 
> the lurkers.

I think it's OK if we're both ganging up on Warp. ;-) ;-)

(No, really, I'm just kidding. :-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> gregjohn wrote:
>> Not everything immoral needs to be illegal, and the difficulty in making
>> something illegal is no indication of its morality.  That is where I 
>> think
>> you're headed on the wrong track with this.
>>
>> Of course, "posh" parents putting their kids into private schools is 
>> indeed a
>> direct cause of public schools deteriorating.  It's not a matter of 
>> jealousy but
>> of direct consequences, negative externalities if you will.
>>
>> In my county, there's two school districts side by side. The kids from 
>> one high
>> school earn all kinds of accolades, the other one has a 46% dropout rate.
>> Whenever I meet a decent, involved family who happens to move into the 
>> bad
>> district, sho 'nuff they send their kids to the private school.
>>
> Sadly, in the US, schools are part of the culture war going on. There 
> are people on boards, like the one in Texas, that **admit** to having 
> gotten elected so they can destroy the public system. The only 
> "standards" are set by the same state boards, who are often unqualified, 
> and make choices about what and how things are taught that have 
> *nothing* to do with what works. This is in contract to private schools, 
> which take on of two tacks - The ones that care at all have the teachers 
> work out what needs to be taught, and hire from a pool that is *noted* 
> for doing well. The ones that are ideology driven use the old school 
> "Rote" learning system, which sidesteps the need to understand the 
> ideas, by satisfying the only thing that can be easily tested, "Whether 
> or not the can give the right answers, whether they understand why they 
> are right or not, even even, sometimes *if* they are right or not (in 
> the case of those things that fall into the 'stuff we want them to take 
> as truth' category)."
> 
> There is a strong rise in the US of institutions like Liberty 
> University, and "home schooling", the former of which will let you turn 
> in dissertations on biology, which contain nothing but whining about 
> god, gods creation, and the vast global conspiracy of Darwinists. The 
> later.. You can buy specialized "pro-creationist" texts for, which 
> teach, "How to answer the questions the way other schools and the 
> government want you to, without corrupting yourself with belief in those 
> things." Its the #1 best selling "home schooler" kit in the country, 
> last I heard. Which should tell you, right off, who is doing 90% of the 
> home schooling in the US. Their reason for it? Most of them buy the kits 
> because they are a) not close enough to, b) can't afford, or c) don't 
> trust the *type* of private school closest to them (FSM forbid a 
> Protestant land in a Catholic school, and actually have to learn 
> something, for example), to teach the *truth (tm)*.
> 
> Their torpedoing the public schools via *intentional* sabotage, neglect, 
> and defunding, even as most of the new "private" schools have been fundi 
> in nature recently, and most of the people sinking the public schools 
> don't even **have** kids in the program, since they are busy teaching 
> them, at home, how Jesus invented toothpaste.
> 
> To the original question... I think we need stricter guidelines as to 
> what sort of BS happens, and not based on more "multiple choice" tests 
> to assess what is being taught, no matter what country is involved. The 
> moment you make something private, it creates a gap between what is 
> "intended" and what is actually happening, from the perspective of 
> anyone believing it should be "universal". But, whether or not they need 
> to be banned is **hugely** dependent one which country you are talking 
> about, or even, as in the US, which *state* its in. In some places, the 
> only difference between the public and private schools are that the 
> public ones could *theoretically* be sued for the things being taught in 
> them, if you ever got a federal judge to look at it, since the local 
> ones don't think there is a single thing wrong, and support what is 
> being taught in them. Its that bad, in some places.
> 
Wow.
I'd forgotten about this side of the question.  Good points you make!
And an interesting case demonstrating regional differences approaching 
this question.

Here in New York, where a huge public school system coexists with an 
extensive network of private schools, it is much, much more about class, 
ability, and race, and hardly at all about ideology affecting curriculum.

The private schools, especially on the HS level, are able to
be exclusive both in the sphere of money, and in the sphere of academic 
ability. What is not so clear to me is to what extent racial exclusion 
is masked by these criteria.  Common cynicism would lead me to expect 
that it is to a great extent but I just do not know.  But I am quite 
sure that ideology is off the table.  The other point I want to stress 
again is that it is not only money.  Students for elite private schools 
must compete in standardized aptitude tests, just as they do to get into 
elite public schools.

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On 31-12-2009 19:12, Darren New wrote:
> andrel wrote:
>> On 31-12-2009 18:09, Darren New wrote:
>>
>> Darren, I think there is something wrong with the roles we play here. 
>> I though we were supposed to violently disagree on everything to 
>> entertain the lurkers.
> 
> I think it's OK if we're both ganging up on Warp. ;-) ;-)
> 
> (No, really, I'm just kidding. :-)

Good, me neither.

(trying in vain to break out of this liars paradox)

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Jim Charter wrote:
> The private schools, especially on the HS level, are able to
> be exclusive both in the sphere of money, and in the sphere of academic 
> ability. What is not so clear to me is to what extent racial exclusion 
> is masked by these criteria.  Common cynicism would lead me to expect 
> that it is to a great extent but I just do not know.  But I am quite 
> sure that ideology is off the table.  The other point I want to stress 
> again is that it is not only money.  Students for elite private schools 
> must compete in standardized aptitude tests, just as they do to get into 
> elite public schools.

Yeah. That is definitely *helping* the wackos to undermine it too. Just 
read something on a school planning to help the "underprivileged" with 
more remedial course, in high school, by... canceling **labs** and 
letting go the teachers for those classes. Yep, that'il fix it. Now 
everyone at the school can impress management by being able to count 
change, instead of only some of them, when they all get those high tech 
jobs working in the "burger lab" at McDonald's. Nothing like "improving" 
education by sacrificing the top students, while elevating the worst, 
for what ever reason they are the worst, to the same level of mediocrity 
and failure. But, heh.. No problem. Its my understanding that more and 
more colleges are responding to this by teaching "remedial" classes too. 
Who needs 4 years of college for people that actually *arrive* knowing 
what they need to start, and pay professors to teach complex subjects, 
if you can give former high school teachers, who can't get decent pay, 
to teach remedial work the first 2 years of college, then charge the 
students for 5-6 more, from the few actual professors you still have 
working there? Isn't 8 years about right, if you want to become a 
computer programmer (which currently takes 3-4, to get a BA in it)? And, 
if it takes 8 more, for the same stupid reason, to get a doctorate.. 
Heck, they can just pay for it on credit cards and loans, from the 
people that brought us the housing collapse, right?

Sigh.. We need to fix things *before* private schools, never mind high 
schools and/or colleges get involved, and that means fixing it starting 
at pre-school. When I was going, someone brought their kid in with a 
diaper bag, a bottle, and a passifier, and got told, "Bring him back 
when he is *ready*." Some place, some where, there is some bozo 
pre-school with 2 nannies, whose job is to change diapers, because a 
bunch of clueless idiots got a few judges to say, "You need to provide 
them with a way to have their kids in school, even if the parents are 
idiots.", and they are using those plastic "self stick" sticker, for 
"art", instead of crayons, because the stickers are *cheaper*, and they 
can't afford to have both nannies and crayons.

Sometimes I despair at the US' ability to survive another 50 years, 
never mind 100, or 200, given that we *actually* seem to think that the 
opinion of some slouch that spend 80% of their time on a couch watching 
Oprah or Nascar (or both), is more important than *funding* schools, 
fixing what doesn't work in them for real, instead of just testing the 
bad ones, and chopping funding, and **keeping the morons fingers out of 
the soup**, while doing so. The same people that *want* us to drag 
people out of a line at the airport, and strip search them, to make sure 
they are not *insane* or *stupid* enough to be trying to blow up a 
plane, think that its irrelevant if someone is insane and/or stupid, 
when telling the school, "I don't want Ezekial to have to learn that 
Evilution stuff!", or imagine that the way to gauge how good a school 
is, should be base not on how many of the kids move on to something 
better later, but a) how many Football stars it produces, and b) how 
many of the kids got them a proper education on farm animals, or 
roofing, or sewage treatment, so they chose the *family* profession, 
over something high falootin and useless, like physics. And, for now at 
least, with the exceptions of "big cities", which are too "librul", most 
of the country seems to be trying to cater to making things dumber and 
dumberer.

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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Warp wrote:
>   Capitalism endorses competition. People will strive for bettering their
> own lives (to get rich, famous or otherwise in a better position in life).
> While this sounds (and somewhat is) a sign of greed, in the grand scale of
> things it's actually greed that benefits the society as a whole: By bettering
> his own life, this person is pushing forward progress, indirectly bettering
> everyone's life in average.
> 
It only does so as long as competition is *possible*. The problem is, 
any place a bottleneck exists, you get 1-2 people, or corporations, 
which swallow up everything in the bottleneck, and then they get 
everything, and everyone else scrambles for the scraps. This is only 
made *worse* when you add into it the, fairly recent, rise to prominence 
of libertarianism, which takes the existing belief in innovation via 
competition, mixes it with social anarchism, and predicates that a) 
there is nothing wrong with companies either swallowing the bottlenecks, 
or even making ones up that shouldn't exist, because the guy with $5 and 
an idea can *somehow* magically overcome the company with $5 billion, 
and 50 lawyers, all dedicated on making sure that a) they can own the 
idea, even when they didn't come up with it, b) the idea seems to 
somehow "undermine" the economy, or c) the guy with his $5 will never 
see anything *close* to a market for it.

Its like arguing that the sheep farmer can make himself rich from a new 
fabric, when everything from his sheep farm to the markets its sold in, 
are *owned* by the people in the castle a mile away.

You have to have a mixture of both. A recognition that "some level" of 
equality is a necessity, or you run aground of your own success, by 
reducing everyone to a state where they can't afford your own product. 
Walmart is a good example. You want quality, for a good price, and which 
doesn't break in five minute from buying it, you **don't** buy Walmart. 
But, 90% of their employees make minimum wage, and no tips. Any of them 
with families get **help** from management to fill out government 
subsidy forms. The only they they can afford is what Walmart sells, and 
the result is one of two things - 1) The quality has to *drop* to make 
up the difference, or 2) their own employees, if the quality where 
raised, wouldn't be able to afford their own products.

This result came from trying to satisfy 99% of the country, and finding 
that 19% of them already couldn't *afford* anything better. Now, 50% of 
them can't. The people buying what would have been considered the 
"poorest" quality 50 years ago (as in things like a toaster they used 
for 20 years before replacing it), are now 20% of the population, not 
90%. This isn't progress.

Or, lets put it another way, since this is an example from the "other" 
side of the fence, where fairness becomes "unfair" to the company. 
Cars.. For most of my fathers early adult life, and teens, it was $1 per 
*pound*, for a car. Now, its $50 per pound. Why? Because the workers 
robbed the company, instead of the company robbing them. Same problem. 
You need some perception of "equality", which includes the rest of the 
people in your country. If you don't, and you are a worker, you scramble 
to get every dime you can, until half the country can't afford what you 
just manufactured. If your are a company, same thing. You can't create a 
state in which you either have to lower quality to the point where 
people consider everything you sell to be crap, but have no choice but 
to buy it, and support "innovation", or "progress". All you do is hang 
yourself with your own rope, until your money supply gets cut off by no 
one being able to afford the crap any more than they can the decent stuff.

You don't need socialism for things to work. You do need either 
companies to recognize that they *have* a social obligation, not just 
one to their own gains and profits, or someone who *recognizes* the 
social obligation, and is willing to say, "Stop screwing everyone." What 
we have now is companies that don't, for the most part give a crap, 
lobbying politicians, how own stock in the companies, often get hired by 
them, if/when they retire, and who also **don't see** their own social 
obligations. If everyone scrounges for the list dime, you end up with a 
world of people with stepped on fingers, two people with bags full of 
dimes, and **nothing to buy with it**.

That has been the whole mess with this health care debacle. The 
insurance companies use their **own**, self owned, company to determine 
what it "costs" to perform a medical procedure, and that is where the 
term "premium" comes from. They underrate the cost, drive up the 
premiums, then get people in congress to argue that, if it costs $100 to 
do something, they say it costs $80, and your therefor have to pay, due 
to their lie, $20, that isn't *fair* to them, and you should be paying 
$25. The governments response - One side says, "OK, there is no way in 
hell we are, at this point, going to get them to stop lying, or using 
their own internal company to rate the costs, so lets provide some 
direct competition, which *doesn't* lie about it.", and the other side 
screams, "Making us charge the customer what it actually costs like that 
is wrong, and the reason isn't because we just don't want to pay it, its 
because government run programs are **socialism**." Sigh...

>   Someone might want to get rich and famous by making a beneficial invention
> or developing something useful in order to sell it for millions. If he
> succeeds, he gets filthy rich (which was his goal), but as a side effect
> the overall quality of the society got increased because now there's a new
> invention which makes everyone's life easier.
> 
They can't. As I already said. They have three options. Go to another 
country, find enough money to do it themselves (or inherit it), or 
**sell it** to some company that gives them 1% of what its actually 
worth, who then makes themselves rich by taking in $100,000,000 for 
every $1,000,000 the guy that invented it does. Yeah, he gets "rich", 
sort of, but not without everyone that is already rich making 100 times 
are much, for doing nothing, other than happening to already have the 
factory needed to manufacture it. Oh, and selling it at a store that 
pays its people so little they can never *ever* hope to try to do the same.

>   What people want is unreasonable. Basically they want to eat the cake and
> keep it too: They want all the benefits of innovation and progress which
> comes from competitive capitalism, but without the competitive capitalism,
> so that everyone owns the same amount. This just doesn't work.
> 
That isn't reasonable. You have to have some compromise, or it just 
doesn't work. Ann Rand and their ilk are all idiots, and the current 
economic mess is squarely at the feet of the nitwits that fell for it. 
Its the flip side of socialism. If everyone has the same, there is no 
reason to innovate. If 5% of the population has 99% of the resources, 
its not **possible** to innovate. You did nothing but replace the 
"state" with "corporations". The average person is still being screwed, 
only worse, because corporations are under no obligation, theoretical or 
otherwise, to bother with the "well being" of anyone other than their 
own stock holders, and, only as much as "necessary" to their customers. 
Problem is, "necessary", in the later case is based solely on, "Enough 
people will buy it.", not on quality, content, or intrinsic value.

>   It's not a coincidence that the best technological innovations are created
> in capitalist countries which endorse free commerce and private ownership and
> entrepreneurship.
> 

Its also not a coincidence that such markets produce 500 times as much 
total crap, by comparison, either. There is a difference between 
"innovation" and "marketing". The later is more important to capitalism 
than the former, by a *huge* margin. Sometimes.. it even manages to kill 
the former, when a better option is available.

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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Darren New wrote:
> Stephen wrote:
>> Sabrina Kilian wrote:
>>> Why do people from the USA want to shout about socialism?
>> It sounds that (in the US) “socialism” is becoming a synonym of 
>> “Communism”
> 
> What do *you* think the difference is?  They sound pretty similar, 
> except one has stuff owned by "the government" and one has it owned by 
> "the people".
> 
Problem is, the "the government owns it", model isn't far off what you 
get with unfettered capitalism either. We had that once in the US, 
before anti-trust laws. Companies owned you house, your clothes, sold 
you your food, provided you with *less* than necessary to pay it all 
back, and even had their own mini-military, to "protect" the companies 
assets from people prone to show up demanding higher pay, or a way out 
of their contracts, or a decrease in their debt to the company. We 
thought this was an horribly bad idea at one point. Now... I am not so 
sure some companies are not backsliding into it. Pretty sure a few 
companies, for example, that sell consumer goods are also offering 
"credit cards", along with the vague discounts they give to their 
employees, while actually "lowering" their pay. One grocery store, as an 
example of the pay lowering, Krogers, I think it was, had many of their 
divisions re-structured so that they went from having 2-3 different pay 
scales, and special pay for meat cutters and others, to *one* single 
wage for all non-managers. Minimum wage. Overnight, they lost 
*everything*. Now all they have to do is offer home loans and credit, 
and its right back to the same BS all over again.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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andrel wrote:
> On 31-12-2009 18:09, Darren New wrote:
> 
> Darren, I think there is something wrong with the roles we play here. I
> though we were supposed to violently disagree on everything to entertain
> the lurkers.

I think you're doing fine. This thread is quite entertaining so far.

-- 
a lurker.

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