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Mikie

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Are you unaware that small businesses and co-ops exist? Are the owners of a local maintenance company not "on the hook" for bankruptcy? What happened ...
December 10, 2020 at 22:54
Good question. Obviously I can't say for sure, but my hunch is that a lot would change, but for the better. But not necessarily in terms of what is pr...
December 10, 2020 at 22:41
No, you're not understanding. There is no "owner." That's exactly the point. The "owners" (if you want to call them that) are the workers themselves. ...
December 10, 2020 at 00:11
I am talking about all employees, yes. All employees run the company. How they choose to structure it, who they assign various responsibilities or lea...
December 09, 2020 at 02:50
Yes. Along the the rest. So when the following is said, in response to "workers should be in control": the point is obvious. Or should be.
December 09, 2020 at 02:46
Yes, but you might as well call it "X" or "God," then. If we don't understand what it means, then what's the point? We're not interested in replacing ...
December 09, 2020 at 02:44
Who said anything about "new, inexperienced employees"? The fact that your mind goes immediately to a scenario like this, where "workers control the b...
December 09, 2020 at 02:36
What are you talking about? It's not some "skin in the game," it's a business that the workers control outright. Businesses make profits and declare b...
December 09, 2020 at 00:52
So the first statement means: there's no way to have an economy with rent and interest without having rest and interest. Excellent insight. Again, apo...
December 09, 2020 at 00:42
Yes. The capitalist system is one based on a relationship between employer and employee. A socialist system would be one where the "employees" (the wo...
December 08, 2020 at 22:33
No kidding. Is this really your argument? That we wouldn't have the "same" economy? Because you didn't say the "same," you said the "economy we have" ...
December 08, 2020 at 22:19
Says who?
December 08, 2020 at 00:38
Like I said, in your childish world of course not. I have no direct contact with Bezos, etc. So if we're going to absurdly restrict the definition of ...
December 07, 2020 at 18:57
That depends when it comes to the neoliberal part, at least according to polls. But there is still a good percentage, I imagine. But even if it is lik...
December 07, 2020 at 18:41
What a shocker!
December 07, 2020 at 16:38
Even put in these deliberately ridiculous terms, yes he does. Not only by the impact he has on his workers, on the automobile industry, on the stock m...
December 07, 2020 at 16:38
There's overwhelming evidence for this. Excellent scholarship has been conducted. Tom Ferguson is one of my favorites. Worth checking out his "Golden ...
December 07, 2020 at 16:22
I think it's worth diverting the discussion a bit by discussing these rationalizations. A criminal trying to rationalize his crimes would be laughed a...
December 07, 2020 at 16:06
I think you've hit on something that simply has to be true once you've gained real power. Otherwise i's like being part of the board of directors and ...
December 07, 2020 at 15:57
This is exactly right. I'm not so sure about this. I don't think they're genetic mutants or that the quality of their brains are somehow different -- ...
December 07, 2020 at 15:48
I'm not too concerned with what Brett thinks given his line of discussion so far. The question is simple enough: Who are the so-called 1%? Misleading,...
December 07, 2020 at 15:29
That's fine. Assuming we know what self-organization is, it could plausibly account for abiogenesis and the concept of the "self," and even consciousn...
December 06, 2020 at 22:33
The state has the monopoly on violence. But they essentially own the state. To say they're subjected to the "same laws and penalties" as anyone else i...
December 06, 2020 at 21:46
If we think of the capitalist system as a game, then all of us are playing this game without knowing always knowing its structure and rules. We see it...
December 06, 2020 at 17:31
This goes to the heart of it. So circling back to rephrase my original question: what are the people like who have benefited most from such a system?
December 06, 2020 at 17:10
Well done. Logic at it's finest. A very important point.
December 06, 2020 at 17:02
Who are you arguing against? Certainly not I; I said none of those things.
December 06, 2020 at 17:00
Rather than being sarcastic, you might have simply asked for the scholarship I was referring to in the preceding sentence, which you politely left out...
December 06, 2020 at 16:58
When discussing concentrations of wealth and power (.001%), there's very probably an interaction. Once you're part of the club, you've had to have int...
December 06, 2020 at 06:27
I missed what this is referring to. Who's "they"?
December 06, 2020 at 06:20
OK...I'm just not sure what "self-organization" means. I once thought this way, and of course in some respects (as I mentioned) it HAS to be true -- h...
December 06, 2020 at 01:08
I follow you up until the last couple words. How about simply an "evolving process"? Which is to say: something which is constantly changing. I'm not ...
December 05, 2020 at 21:07
Yes, I can. Yes, I do. Are you really not understanding this, or just arguing in an attempt to save face somehow? You made a bunch of statements witho...
December 05, 2020 at 18:54
I appreciate it, thank you.
December 04, 2020 at 21:42
Yes, that is fabricated if there's no evidence to support it. When it comes to this particular idea, there's indications that the trend is toward inhe...
December 04, 2020 at 21:39
It's not that they don't make sense -- but whether it's accurate or not, who knows? And why should I believe you? I'm looking for research and evidenc...
December 04, 2020 at 02:05
What exactly are you attributing to "human behavior"? The profit motive? Seems like the age-old argument that capitalism aligns better with human natu...
December 04, 2020 at 01:55
You're giving yourself away when you talk like this. So many tacit assumptions. Thanks for the recommendations. Thank you -- I'll check these out. Muc...
December 04, 2020 at 01:48
Yes but this is hardly research, Brett. Your list of positive or negative attributes doesn't tell us much, other than your own intuitions about the ma...
December 04, 2020 at 01:35
I'm not sure you're understanding what is being called for here. I'm not interested in individual biographies.
December 04, 2020 at 01:30
What makes you say any of the characteristics you mention?
December 04, 2020 at 01:27
Where's the scholarship on this? I'd like to see some evidence. Because it's often claimed, and of course there are examples and thousands of anecdote...
December 02, 2020 at 01:34
Massive state intervention. Also, the idea of a "free market" is often invoked as an ideal of some kind, by Rand and Friedman and others, but it's pur...
December 02, 2020 at 01:29
True, but still interesting. As for your list -- I was thinking more in terms of ideologies and values, not necessarily the character attributes you m...
December 02, 2020 at 01:24
That's a good point. I wanted to add that the more accurate figure is a tenth of 1%, but thought it was too specific. So I'm using "1%" more to signif...
December 02, 2020 at 01:16
If by "people" you mean most laypeople, I don't know where you get that. Besides some vague notions of innateness ("nativist") tendencies and the LAD ...
November 30, 2020 at 23:20
Chomsky's approach is best described as "biolinguistics." He's interested in universal grammar, the innate (genetic) structure of language. This presu...
November 30, 2020 at 19:01
What nonsense. Chomsky's approach isn't anything like this whatsoever.
November 29, 2020 at 21:59
I realize I responded without really understanding the question. What would constitute deeming something as "surpassed" or "beyond" Nietzsche's ethica...
November 24, 2020 at 20:20
I think this interpretation is justified. Heidegger seems almost Aristotelian in some ways, although he almost never speaks of happiness or the "good"...
November 24, 2020 at 20:10