Is Man's Holy Grail The Obtaining Of Something For Nothing?
It appears to this observer that most human effort (certainly on a collective scale) is geared towards obtaining something for nothing, that is, deriving methods for absconding with other folk's labor-value. Whether it is playing the [s]grand casino[/s] stock market or simply having another in your employ, the idea is to somehow profit to a higher degree that what your own labor might produce.
Now, I am anything but anti-capitalism (it being the least ugly shirt on the rack), but beyond the economic system itself, look at the lengths people go to defraud other folks. We currently live in an era where there are absolutely no limits to the creativity of the professional class of liars, cheats, thieves, and scammers.
Now, I am anything but anti-capitalism (it being the least ugly shirt on the rack), but beyond the economic system itself, look at the lengths people go to defraud other folks. We currently live in an era where there are absolutely no limits to the creativity of the professional class of liars, cheats, thieves, and scammers.
Comments (76)
What is your opinion of a person who takes this idea, if I may call it that, and flips it on its head and is interested in obtaining nothing for something? Altruism is still a thing right?
Everyone believes that they derive their values from Plato, Saint Thomas or Kant. However, humanity is surrendered to Ponzi.
Nothing for something no more exists than does something for nothing.
Somebody is paying the freight.
Even if somebody gives you something for "free," it is not really free, not only literally, but in all the other ways that makes the recipients of free stuff dependent.
To each their own.
That's not true. People have brought computers to me for such minor fixes I didn't charge them anything. If I can be a big help to someone with almost no effort on my part I'll do it every time. In fact, if everyone operated on this principle, it could easily be a second golden rule. Treat each person the way you would if you could be the answer their problem.
If your labor is creating value for somebody else, you paid for it. Value cannot be created out of thin air.
This entire idea of "free" is one of the greatest ruses of all-time. There is no such thing as "free." Is the air free? No, it just is. Anything that has economic value must be paid for by somebody.
With this I definitely agree. Lots of people believe that, if we could only solve the problem of limitless free energy, all the world's problems would be solved. Nothing could be further from the truth. All of that freely-consumed energy would end up spilling back into the biosphere, with devastating consequences.
Well, if Einstein was correct and E=MCxC, there should be no lack of energy available. I would think that technology should solve the energy issue reasonably well in the near future.
What do you mean by energy spilling back into the biosphere?
All of the energy that we currently consume on earth has been stored up on earth almost entirely from the sun. Every time we burn fossil fuels, we release back into the biosphere massive amounts of concentrated, stored solar energy. Every time you utilize energy, it dissipates throughout the system, mostly as heat. That's entropy,
If we suddenly have a new source of energy, like cheap fusion, and our energy utilization rises by, say 1000%, that is ten times more heat being dissipated back into the biosphere. That's going to be a problem. Given that some corporate criminals are still trying to perpetrate the lie that climate change isn't happening, the same would certainly happen in such a case. It would surely lead to an environmental catastrophe.
But he is indebting other people for future favors back to him.
He may have fixed someone's computer for no monetary charge this time, but he's also set up the option for the other person doing him a favor, as the opportunity presents itself.
So much in life depends on favors which are difficult to put a price tag on, yet they can be enormously valuable.
I am sort with George Carlin on this one whereas I don't really believe that man can cause much harm to the planet. Where the climate is no doubt changing, nobody really knows the extent to which we are contributing to such. If you look at all predictions over the last 50 years, it's kind of laughable.
Climate is something that has cycles within cycles within cycles for reasons that we will probably never know. It's a 5B year old ecosystem of which we have scant data from the last several decades. That's not much help.
If we do increase our energy consumption by 1000x perhaps this will have an effect but it seems to me that oceans and atmosphere can handle what man throws at them. If not, oh well, the planet will have to find a way to rid itself of our presence.
The current reputable scientific consensus is that it is "Human-caused."
Given the revelation of the complexity and functionality of natural systems (systems theory), one wonders why we do not simply pursue an eco-friendly strategy as a matter of common prudence.
Studies have shown that people are happier once their necessities are looked after - a home to live, food, family, love. Beyond that point, you are more than likely getting unhappier.
That is a great quote. It goes along with Schopenhauer's regarding how if existing was fully positive in character, there would be no such thing as boredom when we are doing nothing. What is the economy but a socialized manifestation of our desires for survival, comfort, and entertainment wrapped in one system? Using others and having others use us "to get things done". Then people procreating and spreading the cycle of ceaseless dissatisfaction. Can't we be still, and die out in passive peace?
Then maybe you should go and live in a landfill.
The arrogance of man, thinking that he can be a threat to the planet.
A few decades (or perhaps centuries) after we have departed, we (and everything we have produced) will have been mixed back into the Earth, as (eventually) there will be not a trace that we were ever here...just the way it should be.
Is this your qualified, scientific opinion? Final answer? Sounds like an excuse to piss in the pool to me.
Perhaps, like many, you have dedicated yourself to saving the planet and find my observation not to your liking, but there's not much I can about that.
You should read science's predictions over the past fifty years and you may begin to realize just how much science knows about this sort of thing.
Exactly. I wouldn't mind if you were saying we can't have any effect, and still doing all the things to remediate pollution, etc.
My friend, I have never met anybody who likes pollution or did not take reasonable measures to do what they can to help in that regard.
Are you thinking that there are legions of people going around and aimlessly polluting?
I believe that all corporate charters should be revoked immediately. Afterwards, only non-profit corporations should be given 10 year charters like the good old days.
It's been known for a couple of centuries that if you allowed corporations to gain power, the results would be fugly.
How do people get rich? I can't quite put a finger on it but there must exist an asymmetry in the exchange between, say, buyer and seller, for such a thing as profit to be real.
The arrogance of man, thinking that he can't be a threat to the planet.
So you have no trouble with asserting such, but you have trouble with considering that man can do damage to the planet?
Yes, and this asymmetry has to somehow be considered good and moral, good.
How exactly, may I ask?
"Greed is good."
The asymmetry in the exchange between the buyer and seller has to be considered good and moral, trivially so, for both sides to engage in it deliberately and in good faith, and for people in general to promote said asymmetry.
The assumption here is that people don't deliberately do that which they believe to be evil.
But if you want to get more Machiavellian about it, by all means, let's wade into that quicksand! We might even find firm ground in the middle of it.
How so? Going down that road, naive it may sound, leads to the rich get richer and the poor get poorer "quicksand" you seem so eager to wade into.
People get rich two ways...either they are working very hard at an endeavor that is rare and pays very well or they are taking somebody else's labor value.
If you make a pair of shoes and find somebody who needs/wants your product, then they must pay for the cost of the materials, overhead, and your labor. Your labor (profit) will be determined by what the market feel is a fair price for what you have created over your costs.
The point of this is that people have figured out how to make much more profit from simply manipulating the system than actually being productive. This is something for nothing on a grand scale. But the concept itself is omnipresent in Western society and completely accepted. As a matter of fact, people are admired and congratulated the more the scam the system.
Let's say that man blows-up the planet and all that's left is space dust.
Everybody's problems are solved, right? Why worry about such a thing? I assure you that The Universe will find a way to move forward sans planet Earth.
In the trades, such an employee is often a “helper”, ie, someone of inferior skill whose extra hands either assist the craftsman by performing menial low-skill services that the latter would rather not spend time or energy on, or is necessary, inasmuch as some things cannot be accomplished by means of only two hands, eg, moving an object too big or heavy for one person to move.
But why should one of inferior skill profit the same as one of superior skill? Shouldn’t greater skill be rewarded by greater profit?
As for the “necessary” employee, the one without which the craftsman would be unable to perform his service, should he be rewarded equally to the craftsman because, without him, the latter would be unable to perform his service at all? Or should we rather reward him less because he is merely necessary, not integral to the enterprise? In other words, it is easy to find a man who can lift the other end of a heavy cabinet; hard to find one who can make the cabinet.
Then there is the craftsman who decides to become a businessman; instead of building cabinets himself, he hires other cabinet-makers to build them for him. Of course, he keeps more of the profit than he pays them individually. Does this seem fair to you? What are his reasons for profiting more than the men or women who do the actual work?
Well, it is not as though our cabinet-maker-turned-businessman does nothing. He relieves the cabinet-makers of a lot of the business of cabinet-making that is not germane to the craft: he advertises for customers; he meets with them and figures out exactly what they want; he measures the job, orders the wood and screws, schedules the work, takes responsibility for errors, both financially and reputationally, etc, etc. One might almost say that he is the servant of his employees; and I would wager, when his employees see him this way, that they do not begrudge him his greater wealth, especially if he does not boast about it, or use it immoderately and ostentatiously.
If instead we take an oath to the credo that a human being should be rewarded according to the amount of work he put into something, regardless of the character of that work...well, we will deal with that if you should take that oath.
I don't think this is new. All technologies do is provide new ways to do old things.
You have expressed at least two distinct ideas. First, that everyone seems to get something for nothing and second, that people commit frauds. You haven't illustrated how these two ideas are connected. There is only a slight resemblance there and that seems to come from the words you have used to describe them. Are you trying to say indirectly that all human beings have intrinsically exploitative relationships with others?
If it were my economic system, everybody would work for themselves (which would solve a lot of problems).
I was saying that it seems like (most) people will do just about anything to obtain something for nothing (and the great majority of it is perfectly legal).
Really? You are, for example, Blondie Orange?
Doesn’t an employee work for himself inasmuch as he expects a wage which will cover his living expenses? But you exclude him from your economic system, and the only possible reason that you do is because the work he does does not DIRECTLY benefit him. To take the example of the cabinet-maker’s helper, it is not HIS cabinet he helps to install, but someone else’s. Indeed, the cabinet-maker himself is not working for himself, for it is not HE needs a cabinet, but rather his client.
Therefore, In the economic system you propose, each individual would work directly to supply himself all his needs, dependent on no one else to either supply them or help him acquire them: I would grow or shoot my own food, dip my drinking water from a spring-house, build a hut from sticks and thatch (there would be no calls to “raise high the roof-beams, carpenters!”), stitch together my own buckskin suit, etc...
This sort of economic system would certainly hold a lot of self-satisfaction, and encourage individual enterprise...
...but it would also be very, very lonely...not to mention primitive.
It's hard to imagine anything more lonely or alienating than what goes on now.
Obviously you cannot have a system where everybody is completely independent, but you can probably have one where people are MUCH more independent. How about getting rid of corporations and 90% of the government. That might be a good start!
I live in a country where there is less government than there was up to some 20 years ago.
Take, for example, the laws and regulations concerning the building of family houses. They are looser now than they were back then, and people are much more left to themselves. Which is good if one is rich, and very bad if one isn't.
Something else you said earlier in this thread I would like to bring back to your attention: that nothing is free.
Consider a man who buys a table from a carpenter at market value: the latter gets compensated for his materials and utilities, for the cost of his helper, etc, and receives a profit commensurate with the value of his skill to help pay for his cost of living.
Now for one of many possible reasons—maybe he had to move to a smaller apartment in which the table wouldn’t fit; maybe he inherited a better table and had no room for the one he bought; maybe his wife didn’t like it and told him to get rid of it—the man who bought the table sets it out beside the street in front of his house and puts a “for free” sign on it, and I, who need a table, come along and see it, load it onto the back of my pickup and take it home.
Now, just whose labor was stolen here? The carpenter was fully compensated by the market; the buyer did what he would with his own property and I,...how can you say I got nothing for free?
Even though somebody ended up with the table and didn't pay for it, it was not free. Somebody else paid for it. This notion of 'free' is one that should die a quick death. It's like the one where the government can print money out of thin air. That's free too, eh?
To your previous point, a lot of things 'should be' that are 'not going to be' anytime soon. Perhaps one of these days, though, everybody will work for themselves. Stranger things have happened.
Minimising work is often a key driver of human behaviour - I suspect we are hard wired for shortcuts. This seems to be the wellspring of most technology. We are a time saving, effort saving species. Given that you have defined a problem or situation, do you have some suggestions towards a solution?
Increasing productivity is a wonderful thing, don't get me wrong. And if people don't wish to work very hard, so be it. They should have less. But to have a system so corrupted by all this fraud and stealing (even in the best of times) seems a bit harsh (I would suggest that people in the future will look back on our times as being pretty backwards).
Even when you point out the absurdities, I've run into few over the years that really have any problems with themselves getting little while the biggest scammers in all fields get rich off of other people. Not that the answer is socialism or communism, God forbid. Those systems take what's not so great and turns it into a f****** catastrophe!
Esp. the freedom to be oppressed by a rich and powerful neighbor!
When people "work for themselves" and when there is minimum government, when people are left to themselves, they are also vulnerable to those more powerful than themselves.
So what is your solution to the problem of power differentials between people (and everything they entail, from hostile takeovers of business to abuse of power)?
Do you live in Canada?
The only solution I have is for my own life. I can't (nor do I desire to) control anybody else.
Oh, you put it like this, making it about (not) controling others.
You have a solution for your own life, and the others can just go to hell, those rats and vermin, right?
And I don't live in Canada. When I talk about the freedom to be oppressed by a rich and powerful neighbor, I mean this literally, my current neighbors, just a few meters away from me.
I used to have a partner who would often say, "The best way to help the unfortunate is to not be one of them." He and I would get into to it occasionally regarding what I thought was a callous decree, but over the years, and long after his passing, I wish I could tell him how right he was.
But you clearly do have that desire, when you talk about minimizing the government and the corporations.
I'm pointing out where the minimizing of government leads to. Which you clearly don't care about.
It's looks more like an attempt to find a justification for plain old Social Darwinism, but with an exception clause for you in particular:
"Other people are free to fight and die like the vermin they are, as long as I'm not one of them."
But you're forgetting it's not up to you to decide whether you're one of them or not.
BIG government leads to BIG misery for the majority every time.
People need to save themselves. The government is not going to do it for them. Government (at best) is a racket controlled by the people who control everything else.
I know life is hard, but working diligently is the best hope people have to live a good life.
People need to save themselves? Yes, what else?
You're not saying anything. The current situation with BIG government and corporations is precisely and simply what some people saving themselves looks like.
You're merely defending the status quo.
You're not saying anything. Other than perhaps airing your own despondency and justifying/rationalizing the status quo.
That's the problem. It's only the elite in corporations and government saving themselves. How about everybody else?
Why should that be a problem?? To you?? You advocate that everyone should save themselves, and if they can't, that's their fucking problem. There you go! The big fish eat the little fish, that's how the big fish survive.
Obviously, the solution is to become a big fish. And if someone doesn't become a big fish, that's just their fucking problem!
Yes, within the context of any system, it is up to the individual to save themselves, but if you were designing a system, you want to avoid giving power to groups because that means individuals are going to be screwed...BIG time.
But you're not designing a system. You don't get to. Nor do you want to.
So? They should just work diligently, duh.