Brett

I thought we were at least on the same page. Maybe not. Anyway let me address this: “more ‘original’ products “. By this I think you mean products tha...

Beautifully put.

Philosophical pessimism has produced a lot of interesting work in literature and plays, and probably in other fields that don’t come to mind. Which is...

You can’t keep increasing wages because there are so many knock on effects. But you can make their wages go further. The government can help with that...

I hold that to be the responsibility of the government; how they spend money, what their priorities are, what they supply to the people and what the p...

Well this is how you do it. You have to define the problem first before you can fix it.

If all people’s living conditions were alleviated without stripping the rich of their money would you still be concerned about the income of the rich?

Okay, so then would you agree this is a failure of government.

But you have defined the enemy, and in a very general way.

I don’t doubt your figures. However, bare in mind that 60 companies is not exactly a crumbling system. The government’s tax take comes from somewhere....

I know there is an extreme imbalance in wealth and that life is hard for many people. But I think the problem is more one of government than greedy CE...

The top tax bracket as far as I can see is 37%. I’m guessing you’re not paying that.

A quick summary of Michael Bloomberg’s life from Wikipedia. Bloomberg was born at St. Elizabeth's Hospital, in Brighton, a neighborhood of Boston, Mas...

Very few CEOs would be like that. Very few would succeed if they were.

What countries and what era are you referencing?

23% does not seem that extreme to me. What do you think it should be?

Second thoughts again. This might sound extreme, but I suspect Capitalism to be an evolutionary stage of our development just as having an opposable t...

I can’t believe anyone would believe we need more people. Maybe better distribution but not more. You asked what comes next to keep Capitalism from cr...

Second thoughts. What Capitalism has created, which is now a problem, is huge population growth. How do we deal with that?

What Capitalism did was lift people out of poverty. The gap between rich and poor might be there, but the “poor” as you call them are far from being a...

This comment is streaked with vague sort of surface facts that suggest something but when you read it amounts to nothing but a bias or prejudice. So i...

This positioning of “Trump supporters”, whatever that is, as “uneducated” seems a little lazy. You’d need to define “educated” first and then, I suspe...

I know a woman who gave birth to a child with a minor problem that can be corrected with modern surgery. Once it would not have been correctable. But ...

Okay. I’m not saying that we can’t value something if it doesn’t have a price. I think, or hope, I made that clear. It’s my opinion that a price on a ...

But not everything produced can be given away. I think I like sushi is still talking about co-existing in a world of economic transactions.

Well you’ve focused on only four lines of my post, so it’s a bit out of context. However your friend may make a lot more money selling the same thing ...

I absolutely understand what you’re saying here, I hope. And I want to go back to your first post about custom made products in terms of your poker an...

Forgive me if I’m teaching you to suck eggs or even wrong here. Resources would be iron ore, for instance, and the labour removing it from the ground....

That’s what the advertising would have you believe, but really it’s narcissism, don’t you think? Playing up to the idea that your special, not like th...

Well it ain’t animal nature. What’s left?

It’s not so weird. I know people who will go out of their way to buy organic milk and meat. They’re prepared to pay more for it because it’s no longer...

So you’re still looking outside the individual for an explanation. Where does responsibility lie?

Maybe I’m not getting it, maybe you mean a unique experience or relationship with a product.

I’m only playing devil’s advocate here. How could the ‘rarity’ remain the norm. When it became the ‘norm’ more would want it. So then it’s no longer a...

Yes, and a corporation didn’t create that, they just tapped into it.

Yes,I understand that. My feeling is that there is something about human nature that wants this fetishism and contributes towards it.

What I’m trying to say is that there is something transactional in human nature that contributes to the Commodity Fetishism. Otherwise why do it?

So why is it so easy to convince people that a pair of jeans with the knees torn out are more valuable than those without the knee torn out?

Thanks for that. Commodity Fetishism is a perception. Perception is the transformative agent. Branding is about perceptions. Who creates the perceptio...

I’m guessing I like sushi means an obsession with cheap, meaningless, over priced, massed produce products that contribute nothing to society. By the ...

If I understand the concept correctly wouldn’t custom made products decrease, to some degree, Commodity Fetishism? I think a Rolls Royce car would mea...

Is this why nothing ever changes.

A commodity gets passed around, consumed. It has a value determined by its perceived worth. The Kardasians are a commodity.

I think you might already see that with the organic/health market. But I don’t see it being any different in the long run than any other commodified m...

Yes, absolutely everything has been commodified. Culture has been commodified. Even your position on climate change has been commodified.

What you’re really talking about here is ‘Branding’, branding of a product. Branding works by targeting an audience susceptible to, or engaged with, a...

I think these two points are relevant. I do think it’s very likely that loneliness, or the idea of the future alone, is the driving force behind formi...

Excuse the time taken to reply. It might depend on the viewer. A critic might say its art, a child might say its art, a person who dislikes art might ...

I just want to add some thoughts about whether a woman's love for children is natural or a preference. Is the desire for love natural or a preference?...

The person I was waiting for was late. In the end though it was fine.