Jordan Peterson Post-Recovery Interview

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Soren

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How can you abolish the Feudalism or the kingdom and install some type of capitalism? The land pertains to the lords! They own it.

I'm not entirely sure what you're saying here.

More individuals own land, homes and other property then anytime in human history and only under a free market capitalist system is that possible. Under communism no one owns anything it is all owned by the state. Under Feudalism the lords owned everything. Capitalism I can buy a house, buy land, not from the state or a lord but from another individual.
 

LUH 3417

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I'm not sure what you mean by capitalist lore but I know of no major proponent of capitalism that ascribes to such a view. Quite the contrary the great captialist proponents such as Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, Hayek etc all made the argument that capitalism increased the number of resources rather than led to a scarcity. Look at oil for example, before someone figured out that we could drill into the ground and use the oil to power things the world for all intensive purposes had zero oil. It is irrelevant that it was in the ground, it was a dead resource that no one could use because no one new how to get it or use it. When people realized that they could make a profit from mining and selling oil all of a sudden we had open to us an energy producing resource that amplified the wealth and well being of the world on an unimaginable scale. That discovery was done by individuals pursuing their own interests, by pursuing their individual interests there was mutual gain. Capitalism leads to an increase of resources not a scarcity. The "capitalist lore" you speak of is nothing of the sort and sounds like the type of criticism that is often put at the foot of capitalism whereby capitalism is painted as being for something that it is in fact against. Same way people attack "trickle down economics" this is a non-existent theory that is constantly being attacked. No economist on the left or right has ever been in favour of trickle down economics. Thomas Sowell put out a challenge for someone to present to him the economist who came up with this theory. A completely erroneous attack which actually originated from the left.



I didn't say there was an inbred deterministic human nature. Everyone pursues their own individual interests, and that can be anything including seeking to create a socialist and communist society, but those interests will never be uniform there will always be variance just by nature of that fact means that in order to have a socialist society on any kind of scale you will need a state, governing body, whatever you want to call it to enforce it.



I have done some study of indigenous cultures specifically with regards to native Americans which contrary to popular belief there was a great deal of war, murder and enslavement among them. There were very very few indigenous cultures that were largely peaceful, this utopia that many like to paint is largely based on wishful thinking rather than fact.

For example in America we know from archaeological finds that on a per-capita basis the most violent place in history may have been in Mesa Verde of southwest Colorado.

"Writing in the journal American Antiquity, Washington State University archaeologist Tim Kohler and colleagues document how nearly 90 percent of human remains from that period had trauma from blows to either their heads or parts of their arms."

Slavery is unfortunately endemic in human history, it goes back so far that it is believed that humans had slaves before we had even learnt to read or write. Yes you can find incidents where it was not the case but they are exceedingly rare

If capitalism was not about death and scarcity then why do we need a dead stock of resources, a standing reserve?
 

LUH 3417

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I'm not sure what you mean by capitalist lore but I know of no major proponent of capitalism that ascribes to such a view. Quite the contrary the great captialist proponents such as Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, Hayek etc all made the argument that capitalism increased the number of resources rather than led to a scarcity. Look at oil for example, before someone figured out that we could drill into the ground and use the oil to power things the world for all intensive purposes had zero oil. It is irrelevant that it was in the ground, it was a dead resource that no one could use because no one new how to get it or use it. When people realized that they could make a profit from mining and selling oil all of a sudden we had open to us an energy producing resource that amplified the wealth and well being of the world on an unimaginable scale. That discovery was done by individuals pursuing their own interests, by pursuing their individual interests there was mutual gain. Capitalism leads to an increase of resources not a scarcity. The "capitalist lore" you speak of is nothing of the sort and sounds like the type of criticism that is often put at the foot of capitalism whereby capitalism is painted as being for something that it is in fact against. Same way people attack "trickle down economics" this is a non-existent theory that is constantly being attacked. No economist on the left or right has ever been in favour of trickle down economics. Thomas Sowell put out a challenge for someone to present to him the economist who came up with this theory. A completely erroneous attack which actually originated from the left.



I didn't say there was an inbred deterministic human nature. Everyone pursues their own individual interests, and that can be anything including seeking to create a socialist and communist society, but those interests will never be uniform there will always be variance just by nature of that fact means that in order to have a socialist society on any kind of scale you will need a state, governing body, whatever you want to call it to enforce it.



I have done some study of indigenous cultures specifically with regards to native Americans which contrary to popular belief there was a great deal of war, murder and enslavement among them. There were very very few indigenous cultures that were largely peaceful, this utopia that many like to paint is largely based on wishful thinking rather than fact.

For example in America we know from archaeological finds that on a per-capita basis the most violent place in history may have been in Mesa Verde of southwest Colorado.

"Writing in the journal American Antiquity, Washington State University archaeologist Tim Kohler and colleagues document how nearly 90 percent of human remains from that period had trauma from blows to either their heads or parts of their arms."

Slavery is unfortunately endemic in human history, it goes back so far that it is believed that humans had slaves before we had even learnt to read or write. Yes you can find incidents where it was not the case but they are exceedingly rare

Perhaps, but there are also plenty of ethnographic accounts in South America, Australia and Polynesia of egalitarian cultures and their economies. Yes they engaged in war but sometimes for pleasure. They were idle most of the day and worked 2-4 hours a day, and never concerned themselves with excess all the while producing surplus with very minimal labor.
 
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Please elaborate how the “liberal mainstream left” has promoted a society where men and women are in control of the means and activity of production and how they are producing only for themselves, instead of for others, with exchange and with reciprocity. How does main stream society constitute the “civil code” of the society, with the activity of production aimed at satisfying the needs of individuals, rather than an arrangement where the order of exchange gives way to the terror of debt.

I agree with you here. the mainstream left has not promoted socialism, they have promoted Crony Capitalism and corporatism that is why they kick out people like Bernie and Gabbard because they plan to upset the status quo.
 
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If capitalism was not about death and scarcity then why do we need a dead stock of resources, a standing reserve?

Who says we do need that? Any standing reserve of resources in a truly capitalist system will only exist if the market (individuals) determines there is a need for it. Take the current pandemic. I'm sure once the pandemic has passed that many people will decide to keep a supply of masks in their home in case another pandemic occurs, while they are not being used these masks become a dead stock of resources a standing reserve, but they still have value to people because it is assumed that one day they may be needed again.
 

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I'm not entirely sure what you're saying here.

More individuals own land, homes and other property then anytime in human history and only under a free market capitalist system is that possible. Under communism no one owns anything it is all owned by the state. Under Feudalism the lords owned everything. Capitalism I can buy a house, buy land, not from the state or a lord but from another individual.
You: "...how do you enforce that socialist community without the state to determine what everyone's needs and abilities are? How do you stop people taking too much or not contributing enough?"
I simply won't coerce, except people like Billy Gaites
Me: "How can you abolish the Feudalism or the kingdom and install some type of capitalism? The land pertains to the lords! They own it."

And yes, even liberal democracy is a big step into a better society compared to feudalism. Until you address my previous posts here, directed at you, probably will be unproductive to continue that conversation
 
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LUH 3417

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Who says we do need that? Any standing reserve of resources in a truly capitalist system will only exist if the market (individuals) determines there is a need for it. Take the current pandemic. I'm sure once the pandemic has passed that many people will decide to keep a supply of masks in their home in case another pandemic occurs, while they are not being used these masks become a dead stock of resources a standing reserve, but they still have value to people because it is assumed that one day they may be needed again.
An individual saving things they have personally deemed meaningful or useful for future use is completely different from an organized group of people exploiting the labor and time of another group of people in order to hoard resources so that the politically powerful group can make a profit on the value of whatever resources are deemed necessary or desirable in a society. Are people planning on selling their masks and the associated stock value of said masks? Furthermore most of the things bought and sold have very little real value in terms of usefulness or necessity.
 

kyle

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Humans are political by nature. Facilitating any transactional action with people outside a close knit friends and family requires some abstract set of laws and enforcement in order for it to operate.

Yes some tribes operate in a more anarchist fashion owing to being basically beong groups of close extended families (though I suspect much of the rosy portrayal is projection on the part of anthropologists looking for ideological points - otoh, how many tribes existed in tyranny? See: Yanomami tribe for instance), but what do you recommend a planet with 7b people do?

A funny thing happened in the Seattle "autonomous zone" - there immediately formed little commitees and armed gunmen calling the shots. Well not one of these experiments over history have lasted very long.

I undestand the attraction of anarcho-whatever but it is just incongruent with reality.
 

Energizer

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Humans are political by nature. Facilitating any transactional action with people outside a close knit friends and family requires some abstract set of laws and enforcement in order for it to operate.

Yes some tribes operate in a more anarchist fashion owing to being basically beong groups of close extended families (though I suspect much of the rosy portrayal is projection on the part of anthropologists looking for ideological points - otoh, how many tribes existed in tyranny? See: Yanomami tribe for instance), but what do you recommend a planet with 7b people do?

A funny thing happened in the Seattle "autonomous zone" - there immediately formed little commitees and armed gunmen calling the shots. Well not one of these experiments over history have lasted very long.

I undestand the attraction of anarcho-whatever but it is just incongruent with reality.

That's why I said in my earlier post, I don't think humans are "ready" yet to live without rulers, but that doesn't mean it's impossible. Just because you can't imagine it, doesn't make it impossible. The point of using tribes as an example is anarchy is the default mode. It's only modern so-called "civilized" society, which is ethnocentric, in which many people have been conditioned to believe alternatives are impossible or "rosy." But somehow, the naysayers who shoot down the idea of anarchism never have anything bad to say about capitalism, gee funny that. It's almost like they can't even see what the real problems are -- because they can't.

Nevertheless, getting down to the root of things has shown the economic ideology and practice of capitalism produces widening inequalities and class hegemony in which the ruling class does nothing and profits off the labor of the poor masses. So I ask, if you think anarchism is so "rosy", what's the alternative? More capitalism? That's obviously a non-solution. People say slavery ended when black people were emancipated, I would argue it never ended in a sense, because everyone has been conditioned into the permanent plantation, cotton-picking mentality that is living in the capitalist system.

As for the CHOP fail, we all saw that coming... or at least I did. I don't think they ever meant to succeed in the first place. It was just a convenient thing for the rulers to show all the fence sitting liberals, "See liberals, this is why alternatives don't work."

What do I recommend a planet of 7 billion people do? Well, I don't recommend they live their lives in indentured servitude, which is what many are forced into, for starters in the capitalist system. Let people form their own societies. Anarchist societies wouldn't have compulsory corporate work, for starters. It would be, for example, like a agrarian societies, basically, everyone looks out for everyone else, share what needs to be shared, or even traded, the rest people can make their own food, start their own farm, etc. Living for the sake of higher values, instead of just mere survival. The ones who desperately crave a ruler can live in their old system and leave the rest to live in new ways.

This article has a nice breakdown of why things went wrong: CHOP's choreographed ‘revolution’ has ended in failure, but success was never the plan

Funny I was talking to my cousin and her husband about this and the first thing they said is how do these people have so much free time and don’t need to be at work? Most people are so conditioned to the idea that we must spend most of our day working even if that work is meaningless or non productive or misery producing, it’s still better than sitting around in a dirty tent.

Yeah, it is ironic indeed that the ones who think the slaves are primitive pre-literate societies, rather than as we know, the other way around largely.
 
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LUH 3417

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Humans are political by nature. Facilitating any transactional action with people outside a close knit friends and family requires some abstract set of laws and enforcement in order for it to operate.

Yes some tribes operate in a more anarchist fashion owing to being basically beong groups of close extended families (though I suspect much of the rosy portrayal is projection on the part of anthropologists looking for ideological points - otoh, how many tribes existed in tyranny? See: Yanomami tribe for instance), but what do you recommend a planet with 7b people do?

A funny thing happened in the Seattle "autonomous zone" - there immediately formed little commitees and armed gunmen calling the shots. Well not one of these experiments over history have lasted very long.

I undestand the attraction of anarcho-whatever but it is just incongruent with reality.
Why is being a slave to abstracting exchange value a prerequisite for the development of any complex human culture just because some humans began doing it a few thousand years ago?

I think primitive societies are mentioned and a topic for exploration because so many anthropologists noticed they simply did not do things they didn’t want to do. There was very little coercion. The irony in even calling someone a savage primitive is the common sense allegiance they had to their own human nature and not going against it for an “abstraction”.
 

LUH 3417

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That's why I said in my earlier post, I don't think humans are "ready" yet to live without rulers, but that doesn't mean it's impossible. Just because you can't imagine it, doesn't make it impossible. The point of using tribes as an example is anarchy is the default mode. It's only modern so-called "civilized" society, which is ethnocentric, in which many people have been conditioned to believe alternatives are impossible or "rosy." But somehow, the naysayers who shoot down the idea of anarchism never have anything bad to say about capitalism, gee funny that. It's almost like they can't even see what the real problems are -- because they can't.

Nevertheless, getting down to the root of things has shown the economic ideology and practice of capitalism produces widening inequalities and class hegemony in which the ruling class does nothing and profits off the labor of the poor masses. So I ask, if you think anarchism is so "rosy", what's the alternative? More capitalism? That's obviously a non-solution. People say slavery ended when black people were emancipated, I would argue it never ended in a sense, because everyone has been conditioned into the permanent plantation, cotton-picking mentality that is living in the capitalist system.

As for the CHOP fail, we all saw that coming... or at least I did. I don't think they ever meant to succeed in the first place. It was just a convenient thing for the rulers to show all the fence sitting liberals, "See liberals, this is why alternatives don't work."

This article has a nice breakdown of why things went wrong: CHOP's choreographed ‘revolution’ has ended in failure, but success was never the plan
Funny I was talking to my cousin and her husband about this and the first thing they said is how do these people have so much free time and don’t need to be at work? Most people are so conditioned to the idea that we must spend most of our day working even if that work is meaningless or non productive or misery producing, it’s still better than sitting around in a dirty tent.
 
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I saw this a couple days ago.

I'm definitely not a Peterson nuthugger, and never have been. The fact he was simultaneously recommended to so many people at once around 2016 by YouTube, who supposedly don't like him, gives me the strong impression that he had a forced and artificial meteoric rise in popularity. I don't think he personally was part of this or knew about it, but some powerful people definitely pushed him hard. The point of him is to capture the current alt movement of young men and lead them astray. Instead of doing something monumental, he tells you to clean your room. And when push comes to shove, he tells you to abhor violence. He and his philosophy is a trap.

On the other hand I do think Jordan Peterson is a very deep man, and to be fair he does get a lot of a hate along with the love and worship. He's not the smartest man, but out of all the artificial and forced Right-wing goons meant to lead us astray (Ben Shapiro, Milo, Alex Jones, Joe Rogan, etc), he is easily the smartest and most interesting, by far, no contest. And he isn't even Right Wing, and has a far larger breadth of knowledge too other than politics.

His health stuff is very stupid though. Considering he fell for the "serotonin is the happiness chemical" pharma meme, and backs this up with violent aggressive lobsters, shows that his views on health are from the wrong perspective.

I think his all beef diet honestly isn't a bad start. Remove all the allergens destroying his and his daughters bodies. It's not gonna fix the root issue but it's far better than what they were doing. It's just that, even when eating lots of beef liver, kidney, and heart, he's still gonna develop some deficiencies if he only eats beef. I know this because I checked.

And then there's the whole glucose thing. Why is is that everytime people eat a low carb, high saturated fat diet, they feel the need to not only cut carbs to ketogenesis-levels, but also have 0 grams ad their ******* goals? It's so ridiculous and I see it everywhere. They assume the less carbs the better + that ketogenesis is only attainable at <10g of carbs a day. I see it everywhere, including in family that does this shitty version of keto.

It's like, **** man, you can still be in full ketogenesis while eating 50g of carbs a day. Some people can even manage 60g-75g carbs a day and be in keto. At least then you'll have enough glucose for your brain.

HFLC people who only want to lose weight go ultra low carb when that's really only appropriate imo for people with excitatory brain conditions like epilepsy and/or for treating obesity. Besides that it's just foolish, especially when the goal is simply to remove food allergens and treat an inflammatory condition, like in Peterson's case.

Checking his current diet out, it's readily apparent that it's a bit too high in protein for his weight of 160lb, especially with him not trying to gain more muscle. If he's eating anywhere around 2500 calories a day, that means he'd getting 200g+ of protein, probably around 220g, which is kinda a lot of muscle maintenance at his weight. Secondly, he's obviously getting virtually zero carbs, regardless of beef muscle glycogen. 3rdly, the vitamin and mineral deficiencies. He should be good on the b vitamins, vitamin A, and copper/zinc, but everything else is way too low. He's getting no vitamin C (and no, dehydroascorbic acid in muscle tissue doesn't cut it, otherwise sailors in the 1600s eating a diet of bread and salt beef/pork wouldn't have gotten scurvy. The small amount may be helping but he definitely needs more. The lack of any significant vitamin E id also concerning. And finally, electrolytes and minerals. If he's just consuming beef muscle/organs, then he's deficient in calcium, magnesium, and potassium. He could solve this somewhat with bone meal but that has heavy metals. He said he uses salt so that's good I guess. He should good some potassium chloride lite-salt.

Overall it could be a lot better and might be responsible for his ill health. He said he doesn't use any supplements and seemed proud of it, so he might be one of those people who only wants his vitamins/minerals from food. Which unfortunately is an impossible task when only eating non-allergenic foods.

He's either gotta get an electrolyte/mineral supplement + vitamin C/E/K, or he's gotta find some new foods. I wonder if he's tried nutritional yeast, I wonder if he's tried egg yolks without the whites because usually it's the whites that cause allergies in eggs.

This diet probably made him feel amazing at first as all the allergens and garbage was cut out, but now a couple years later as his bodies stores of certain vitamins/minerals have been exhausted, and the stress of nearly zero glucose has caught up to him, the benefits have begun to become outweighed. All of that plus the psychological stress of his life and the use and disuse of benzos have caused some major imbalances.

I wonder how much better he'd feel on a modified Peat diet. I'm not going to pretend that everyone can handle milk, but perhaps if be took his beef only diet and modified it in ways to align with Peat's principles, he'd probably feel better and it would be optimal. I bet if he took his beef diet and added bone meal/lite-salt + calcium/magnesium bicarbonate, added vitamin C/E/K, and added a trace mineral supplement, that'd he immediately feel a lot better. And I bet if he then took this diet and lowered the beef muscle portion a little bit and replaced those calories with something like glucose syrup or lactose (with lactase if he's intolerant)(galactose plays nice with a high fat diet, fructose does not), he'd probably feel a lot better. He could just add glucose syrup/lactose to club soda or a seltzer and make a DIY soda and get 75g-200g of carbs a day that way, and calm himself the **** down.

It's also interesting to speculate that progesterone, dihydroprogesterone, and pregnenolone would make him feel a lot better right now, considering their anti-excitatory effect and general brain and health benefits. He'd potentially be having a much better time.

I use to be heavily against benzos, and still am in anyone under 18 or even 21, and have seen people fail to use them in a healthy way over and over again. I also don't like how they feel personally. But even with all of that, and their dangers, I still think they have great potential for treating anxiety, and if used on the right person at the right dose in the right context, that they can be absolutely life changing, in a good way. They are however still overprescribed in the young, and at least now that Peterson has experienced the Truth and escaped the Pharma-Matrix on that front, he'll be more critical of them in the future, and might even realize the Truth about some other pharma drugs too, like SSRI's. Hopefully he does and uses his celebrity to broadcast the truth.

Last thing, he should also really get on an antihistamime, and so should his daughter. I bet he'd feel much better on cyproheptadine or hydroxyzine/cetirizine.

Long comment I know, but I saw his interview a couple days ago and have been thinking about it for some reason. He looks fairly fragile and sickly right now. Like I said earlier in my comment, I am not a Peterson nuthugger, and never have been. In fact I've generally been in opposition to him and found the strange obsession of his fandom to be odd. I watched him every now and then when he first started becoming popular around 2016 or so, but after a couple months I stopped, and probably read or watch him less than once a month. As I said, he's meant to mislead us into apathy and intellectual circle-jerk-dom. He has that Sam Harris vibe if hyperfocusing on unimportant stuff like micro-definitions and stuff as well as preaching post-war Christian Zionist ethics which really are there to control us, not make us better or healthier.

I do think though that he's a pretty deep man, and he has some interesting thoughts on Jung, Nietzsche, and Dostoevsky, as well as his thoughts on Archetypes and myths. I also think personally he's likely a good man, which is why this thread seems toxic: I'm a critic of him but even I'm put off by some of the stuff people in here are saying about him. It's just kinda mean and uncalled fall. Call Milo Yon-whateverthefuck mean names, he deserves it, he's a bully. ***t on Ben Shapiro too, he's a Zionist shill who views average American's as machines and views the US as a giant factory for Israel's benefit. But Jordan Peterson doesn't deserve that stuff. Call him out for promoting weakness, sure. Call him out for whatever. But don't personally attack him. I just don't see the justification for that.

It's like with Noam Chomsky. I disagree and hate Noam Chomsky even more than Peterson (though Peterson is mote dangerous), and Chomsky's cult of obsessed fans is perhaps even weirder, but Chomsky isn't a man with ulterior evil motives. So a personal attack on him betrays a certain high serotonin aggression and poor physical and mental health on the part of the critic.
 
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+1 Well said. Unfortunately in these socialist utopias it makes the assumption that humans are basically good and that all that is needed is for evil capitalism to get out of the way and all the people who are supposedly hoarding resources to relinquish them and everything will work out.

Unfortunately this is not comenserate with reality. Also it is a total myth that in a capitalist society there is an elite class that hoards resources in order to have power over others. There is a cost to holding onto resources the only reason one does they believe that it has value than can be exchanged for value at a later date.

Humans are political by nature. Facilitating any transactional action with people outside a close knit friends and family requires some abstract set of laws and enforcement in order for it to operate.

Yes some tribes operate in a more anarchist fashion owing to being basically beong groups of close extended families (though I suspect much of the rosy portrayal is projection on the part of anthropologists looking for ideological points - otoh, how many tribes existed in tyranny? See: Yanomami tribe for instance), but what do you recommend a planet with 7b people do?

A funny thing happened in the Seattle "autonomous zone" - there immediately formed little commitees and armed gunmen calling the shots. Well not one of these experiments over history have lasted very long.

I undestand the attraction of anarcho-whatever but it is just incongruent with reality.
 

Energizer

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+1 Well said. Unfortunately in these socialist utopias it makes the assumption that humans are basically good and that all that is needed is for evil capitalism to get out of the way and all the people who are supposedly hoarding resources to relinquish them and everything will work out.

Unfortunately this is not comenserate with reality. Also it is a total myth that in a capitalist society there is an elite class that hoards resources in order to have power over others. There is a cost to holding onto resources the only reason one does they believe that it has value than can be exchanged for value at a later date.

Less than 1% of the population owns more than 99% in wealth. This is a fact, not an opinion or a "myth": 62 people own the same as half the world, reveals Oxfam Davos report | Oxfam International'

If you can't acknowledge how ultra-wealth gives a select group a power advantage over others, then you are ignoring reality that stares you in the face. Ever heard of advertising, lobbying, special interest groups, Super PACs, bribery... need I go on... you'd have to be naive to think money can't buy you power in the modern world, and that this power is proportional to wealth.
 
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Soren

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Nevertheless, getting down to the root of things has shown the economic ideology and practice of capitalism produces widening inequalities and class hegemony in which the ruling class does nothing and profits off the labor of the poor masses. So I ask, if you think anarchism is so "rosy", what's the alternative? More capitalism? That's obviously a non-solution. People say slavery ended when black people were emancipated, I would argue it never ended in a sense, because everyone has been conditioned into the permanent plantation, cotton-picking mentality that is living in the capitalist system.

This simply does not stand up to the facts. It is the same tired argument that has been made against capitalism forever and no matter how much evidence is presented never seems to die. The quality of life for the whole world continues to rise yet people still obsess over the wealth gap. This to me comes from most people from a place of envy. People have such envy and hatred to the rich that they would rather have the poor poorer so long as the rich were less rich. Once again if we look at the facts this accusation of capitalism producing ever widening inequalities is simply wrong and actually the opposite is in fact true:

Global Income Inequality Is Declining
"Barack Obama once referred to income inequality as “the defining challenge of our time.” And, to be fair to the former U.S. President, income inequality within countries has been increasing in recent decades. Some reasons for that increase, such as corrupt dealings between politicians and crony capitalists, are deplorable and should be stopped. Others are, probably, unavoidable. Increasingly, for example, men and women find their life partners in college or grad school. Their households tend to be richer and their children more fortunate. That leads to greater income and social stratification that, being voluntarily entered into, should not be interfered with by the state. Income inequality on a national level, in other words, is unlikely to go away. International or global inequality, in contrast, is declining.

Humanity is some 300,000 years old and while it is true that the material circumstances of our distant ancestors were much more equal than is the case today, almost everyone lived in extreme poverty. The wealth accumulation among nomadic hunter-gatherers, explains Steven Pinker in his book Enlightenment Now: The Case for Science, Humanism and Progress, was circumscribed by the weight and volume of the physical possessions that they could carry on their backs. Life among sedentary hunter-gatherers was more unequal. They “developed hereditary nobility who kept slaves … [and] hoarded luxuries.” Social stratification accelerated following the agricultural revolution some 12,000 years ago. As more people settled down, city states and, later, empires emerged. These early polities developed ruling classes (nobles, priests, bureaucrats, etc.) who tended to be much better off than the rest of the population. That said, even the richest and most powerful people of the past could not begin to imagine of the riches and conveniences enjoyed by ordinary people today.

Inequality, explains Princeton University economist Angus Deaton in his book The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, is the handmaiden of progress. It is only when some people become better off that a higher standard of living becomes imaginable and, consequently, achievable. That is precisely what happened during the Industrial Revolution, when a pronounced income gap started to emerge between the countries of Western Europe and North America on the one hand and the rest of the world on the other hand. In 1775, for example, U.S. gross domestic product per person stood at $1,883. In 2016, it stood at $53,015 – a 27 fold increase in the real standard of living (figures are in 2011 U.S. dollars). The economic divergence between the West and the Rest, which took off during the 19th century, continued well into the 20th century. In recent decades, however, global inequality started to decline. That did not happen due to declining incomes in rich countries. Most of those have recovered from the Great Recession and are at an all-time high. Rather, it happened due to quicker growth in non-Western countries, which have benefited from internal economic reforms, including the end of central planning, and globalization of trade, services and financial flows.

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The most commonly used indicator of income inequality is the Gini coefficient, which measures income inequality on a scale from zero (i.e., all incomes are equal) to 1 (i.e., one person has all the income). One way to measure global income inequality, explains Branko Milanovic from City University of New York, is to calculate a population-adjusted average of Gini values for all individual countries. As can be seen, the decline in global income inequality started in the 1980s and is coterminous with a period of greater economic freedom and interconnectedness known as “globalization.” This measure of income inequality, let’s call it inequality between countries, is somewhat misleading, however, for it assumes that everyone within any given country earns the same income. To get a sense of inequality across the human race, income inequality between countries has to be adjusted by income inequality within countries. On that measure, global income inequality begins to decline somewhat later - after the beginning of the new millennium. Still, both measures of global income inequality show a downward trend. As such, Milanovic concludes, “We are witnessing the first decline in global inequality between world citizens since the Industrial Revolution.”
 

LUH 3417

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This simply does not stand up to the facts. It is the same tired argument that has been made against capitalism forever and no matter how much evidence is presented never seems to die. The quality of life for the whole world continues to rise yet people still obsess over the wealth gap. This to me comes from most people from a place of envy. People have such envy and hatred to the rich that they would rather have the poor poorer so long as the rich were less rich. Once again if we look at the facts this accusation of capitalism producing ever widening inequalities is simply wrong and actually the opposite is in fact true:

Global Income Inequality Is Declining
"Barack Obama once referred to income inequality as “the defining challenge of our time.” And, to be fair to the former U.S. President, income inequality within countries has been increasing in recent decades. Some reasons for that increase, such as corrupt dealings between politicians and crony capitalists, are deplorable and should be stopped. Others are, probably, unavoidable. Increasingly, for example, men and women find their life partners in college or grad school. Their households tend to be richer and their children more fortunate. That leads to greater income and social stratification that, being voluntarily entered into, should not be interfered with by the state. Income inequality on a national level, in other words, is unlikely to go away. International or global inequality, in contrast, is declining.

Humanity is some 300,000 years old and while it is true that the material circumstances of our distant ancestors were much more equal than is the case today, almost everyone lived in extreme poverty. The wealth accumulation among nomadic hunter-gatherers, explains Steven Pinker in his book Enlightenment Now: The Case for Science, Humanism and Progress, was circumscribed by the weight and volume of the physical possessions that they could carry on their backs. Life among sedentary hunter-gatherers was more unequal. They “developed hereditary nobility who kept slaves … [and] hoarded luxuries.” Social stratification accelerated following the agricultural revolution some 12,000 years ago. As more people settled down, city states and, later, empires emerged. These early polities developed ruling classes (nobles, priests, bureaucrats, etc.) who tended to be much better off than the rest of the population. That said, even the richest and most powerful people of the past could not begin to imagine of the riches and conveniences enjoyed by ordinary people today.

Inequality, explains Princeton University economist Angus Deaton in his book The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, is the handmaiden of progress. It is only when some people become better off that a higher standard of living becomes imaginable and, consequently, achievable. That is precisely what happened during the Industrial Revolution, when a pronounced income gap started to emerge between the countries of Western Europe and North America on the one hand and the rest of the world on the other hand. In 1775, for example, U.S. gross domestic product per person stood at $1,883. In 2016, it stood at $53,015 – a 27 fold increase in the real standard of living (figures are in 2011 U.S. dollars). The economic divergence between the West and the Rest, which took off during the 19th century, continued well into the 20th century. In recent decades, however, global inequality started to decline. That did not happen due to declining incomes in rich countries. Most of those have recovered from the Great Recession and are at an all-time high. Rather, it happened due to quicker growth in non-Western countries, which have benefited from internal economic reforms, including the end of central planning, and globalization of trade, services and financial flows.

inc(1).png


The most commonly used indicator of income inequality is the Gini coefficient, which measures income inequality on a scale from zero (i.e., all incomes are equal) to 1 (i.e., one person has all the income). One way to measure global income inequality, explains Branko Milanovic from City University of New York, is to calculate a population-adjusted average of Gini values for all individual countries. As can be seen, the decline in global income inequality started in the 1980s and is coterminous with a period of greater economic freedom and interconnectedness known as “globalization.” This measure of income inequality, let’s call it inequality between countries, is somewhat misleading, however, for it assumes that everyone within any given country earns the same income. To get a sense of inequality across the human race, income inequality between countries has to be adjusted by income inequality within countries. On that measure, global income inequality begins to decline somewhat later - after the beginning of the new millennium. Still, both measures of global income inequality show a downward trend. As such, Milanovic concludes, “We are witnessing the first decline in global inequality between world citizens since the Industrial Revolution.”
It seems to me you think wealth is the ability to go to a super market and buy poisoned food and live in toxic environments. There is no nuance in your argument as to the state of actual poverty of nomadic hunter gatherers, which I’ve proved to not be true in many places prehistorically but you seem to not reply to those posts. The living hand to mouth savage is just as much a myth as you believe the evils ascribed to capitalism to be. The improved material conditions say nothing about individual freedom, societal health, or the glaring reality that any recent inflated domestic product per person has led to a global economic collapse of enforced medical fascism colloquially known as corona virus.
 
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Soren

Soren

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If you can't acknowledge how ultra-wealth gives a select group a power advantage over others, then you are ignoring reality that stares you in the face. Ever heard of advertising, lobbying, special interest groups, Super PACs, bribery... need I go on... you'd have to be naive to think money can't buy you power in the modern world, and that this power is proportional to wealth.

I agree money can buy you power in the modern world and there is a great deal of corruption. However, this is because we have moved away from capitalism and have something much more akin to Corporatism. This has happened due to over regulation and a centralization of power. We have given politicians too much power they should be an impartial referee not a picker and chooser of winners and losers but the more we give power to them rather than the individual the more likely they're to be corrupt and more open they are to things such as lobbying, special interest groups etc. The solution then is not to impose a socialist/communist system which would be even more centrally regulated with 100% of power with the state this would make everything 1000x worse with all power concentrated in the hands of politicians with no potential recourse or redress.

Less than 1% of the population owns more than 99% in wealth. This is a fact, not an opinion or a "myth": 62 people own the same as half the world, reveals Oxfam Davos report | Oxfam International'

There will always be a disparity where a small percentage own a large portion of the wealth, that is true in all things; sports, mathematics, nature take your pick. If you have a system that rewards competence then there will always be those who exist at the margins who work harder than everyone else, are more naturally gifted than everyone else and as a result earn more, score more goals, are the mathematical genius', have more cubs etc. This is something that is desirable and fair, and leads to benefits for the whole not just the one. Take football for example, in many professional teams usually it is the top 3-4 players that score the majority of the goals, as a result they are usually the highest paid, one might say this is unfair but the whole team benefits as a result of this yes the top scorers have benefited a bit more but that is because they have contributed more.

With regards to Oxfam it is a shocking organisation, full of corruption and every much as part of the establishment as any other major political party and the statistic you have cited is simply wrong and very misleading.

Oxfam is entitled to its own opinions but not its own facts
"Credit to Oxfam’s communications team. Each year, riding on the coattails of the jamboree in Davos, they manage to make a huge splash about global wealth inequality.

And every year, it is pointed out that, as Tim Worstall explained on CapX last January, wealth is not some fixed pie. It is usually accumulated through entrepreneurial activity that fulfils wants and needs, enhancing global welfare. Sadly, most readers who pay only a passing interest in the story will miss this nuance and receive claims such as “82 per cent of all wealth created in the last year went to the top 1 per cent” with the shock they are designed to trigger.

Oxfam is, of course, a development charity. Their implicit message, amplified through major broadcasting outlets such as the BBC, is that the wealth of global rich causes the poverty of the poor. But where exactly is the evidence that more interventionist government is the way to reduce global poverty? In fact, recent economic history suggests the opposite: global poverty has plummeted as major countries have liberalised and ceased trying to “manage” their economies in the way Oxfam wants.

It would bad enough if Oxfam’s ideological bias was blinding the organisation to what works in the fight against poverty. But the charity also appears to be playing fast and loose with the facts. Take just one of the claims in their report, subsequently republished on the BBC website. Oxfam makes the astonishing claim that “two-thirds of billionaires’ wealth is the product of inheritance, monopoly and cronyism”. Given previous assessments by Forbes, Wealth-X and others have found that around 60 per cent of American billionaires are “self-made,” this seems a particularly striking statistic, in which monopolies and cronyism are doing a lot of heavy lifting.

Intrigued by this finding, Sam Dumitriu of the Adam Smith Institute sought out its source. He found that the methodology was devised in an Oxfam discussion paper called Extreme Wealth Is Not Merited by Didier Jacobs. Overall, that study concludes that 19 per cent of wealth arises from monopolies, with the rest of the 65 per cent coming from inheritance or cronyism. To calculate the share coming from inheritances, he used Forbes data, which chalks up all wealth for individuals who inherited fortunes as “inherited wealth”, regardless of whether that wealth has grown substantially since the inheritance. This figure, by definition, ignores any extra wealth generated by that inheritance and so is hardly representative of genuine passive inheritance.

The cronyism figure is more speculative still. It includes “wealth mainly acquired in a corruption-prone country and state-dependent industry (high presumption of cronyism)” or “wealth mainly acquired in the mining, oil and gas industry.” Again, while in many countries these industries do depend on state favours and are prone to crony capitalism, it seems a little much to suggest that all wealth in these industries in certain countries can be recorded as wealth driven by cronyism.

Oxfam’s real agenda becomes clear, though, when we look at their methodology for the monopoly portion of the claim. As Dumitru has described in detail, Jacobs first defines monopoly to include any industry with “network effects.” By construction then, firms such as Facebook and Google would be monopolists, even though their existence has been overwhelmingly beneficial for consumers. He then makes the same intellectual leap again, asserting that all wealth coming from the IT industry should be recorded as “monopoly”. Not content with this intellectual bankruptcy, this same blanket approach is applied to finance, health care, legal industries and wealth acquired as a CEO of a company, if the billionaire neither founded nor inherited the business.

To claim this is shoddy methodology which hugely overestimates wealth acquired by “bad” means is a spectacular understatement. Again and again, the mere possibility of cronyism or a theoretical argument for market failure in an industry is taken to prove that all billionaire wealth in that industry is ill-gained. That this kind of report is being taken seriously and propagated by our state broadcaster is a travesty.

We should not give Oxfam a free pass or refuse to criticise them for publishing and distributing such nonsense because they happen to be a charity or sometimes do some good. To do so would be like ignoring socialist failures because the revolutionaries had “good intentions”.

Oxfam increasingly pollutes our discourse with phony statistics and false narratives in a highly politicised way. These findings are being used to call for a policy shift – a turn away from market-based capitalism, which has lifted billions around the world out of poverty. No doubt there will be plenty of wanna-be world planners at Davos this week who will lap up the message – the Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, will be one of them. But Oxfam’s political agenda goes against the history of the economic development they purport to want.

Perhaps more importantly though, it’s based on very bad analysis. And it’s time our media held them to higher standards, rather than taking their politicised work at face value."
 
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Soren

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It seems to me you think wealth is the ability to go to a super market and buy poisoned food and live in toxic environments.

Yes I think it is better to be able to go to the supermarket and buy "poisoned food" then to starve to death. Would I like it to be better, yes, do I think it can and will improve yes. But it will only improve in a society where the people have enough wealth to be able to afford to make better choices. Now I'll admit that almost all the food and diet fads of today are wrong and are guided by a very corrupt food industry but there would be no hope at all for any improvement if there was not a free market capitalist system where people can make different choices.

I can go out and buy grass fed free range beef rather than factory farm beef because there are enough people in the market who have sufficient wealth to pay extra money for such a product. If there were not there would be very little grass fed beef because it is a lot more expensive to produce and there would be no incentive for farmers to produce beef that way. The wealthier a country becomes the more choices everyone has, not just the super rich.

There is no nuance in your argument as to the state of actual poverty of nomadic hunter gatherers, which I’ve proved to not be true in many places prehistorically but you seem to not reply to those posts

There is plenty of nuance in my argument you're just refusing to see it. I gave you specific archaeological examples that showed the unbelievable brutality of the supposed peaceful savage I could give you many more. Did you read my previous post fully?
The wealth accumulation among nomadic hunter-gatherers, explains Steven Pinker in his book Enlightenment Now: The Case for Science, Humanism and Progress, was circumscribed by the weight and volume of the physical possessions that they could carry on their backs. Life among sedentary hunter-gatherers was more unequal. They “developed hereditary nobility who kept slaves … [and] hoarded luxuries.”

Even in your own account you said that:
Perhaps, but there are also plenty of ethnographic accounts in South America, Australia and Polynesia of egalitarian cultures and their economies. Yes they engaged in war but sometimes for pleasure.

You're saying that there were once groups of people who would have recreational down time for pleasure, whomever said they did not? What does that prove? That anarchism or socialism will work? Every society in history has had time for pleasure as well as work even the Spartans. I fail to see what it is you think you have "proven" with that statement.

The improved material conditions say nothing about individual freedom, societal health,

Of course they do!! Improved material conditions have everything to do with increasing individual freedom and societal health. Now I'll admit when you get to the western world the increase of wealth results in a very small increase in societal health or virtually none. But for the vast majority of the world improved material conditions makes a massive difference to individual freedom and societal health. Think of a family in India that does not have access to running water and has to spend hours each day going back and forth between a well and their house to get it think of the countless hours of time lost and the restriction of freedom. Once they get running water in their house all of a sudden they have a lot more freedom because they no longer have to spend hours each day fetching water. That time can be put towards other things. Think about how cell phones have helped to give more freedom to individuals, billions of people in Africa who were essentially cut off from the world all of a sudden can communicate in a way they could never do before. That is a massive increase in their freedom.

Please don't get me wrong by the way I do think the west has MAJOR issues and the Davos crowds and the elites are trying to take us down a one world government very dark path. But I think they are the ones who actually WANT "socialism" except it won't be socialism, they will never let the Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyns of this world win. They will say to the masses we will give you socialism, we will take on the rich but in reality they will just give us Corporatism, we're heading to Aldous Huxley's "A Brave New World" much faster than George Orwell's "1984".

The only solution is less government not more, more capitalism not less, more freedom not socialism or communism.
 

LUH 3417

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Yes I think it is better to be able to go to the supermarket and buy "poisoned food" then to starve to death. Would I like it to be better, yes, do I think it can and will improve yes. But it will only improve in a society where the people have enough wealth to be able to afford to make better choices. Now I'll admit that almost all the food and diet fads of today are wrong and are guided by a very corrupt food industry but there would be no hope at all for any improvement if there was not a free market capitalist system where people can make different choices.

I can go out and buy grass fed free range beef rather than factory farm beef because there are enough people in the market who have sufficient wealth to pay extra money for such a product. If there were not there would be very little grass fed beef because it is a lot more expensive to produce and there would be no incentive for farmers to produce beef that way. The wealthier a country becomes the more choices everyone has, not just the super rich.



There is plenty of nuance in my argument you're just refusing to see it. I gave you specific archaeological examples that showed the unbelievable brutality of the supposed peaceful savage I could give you many more. Did you read my previous post fully?


Even in your own account you said that:


You're saying that there were once groups of people who would have recreational down time for pleasure, whomever said they did not? What does that prove? That anarchism or socialism will work? Every society in history has had time for pleasure as well as work even the Spartans. I fail to see what it is you think you have "proven" with that statement.



Of course they do!! Improved material conditions have everything to do with increasing individual freedom and societal health. Now I'll admit when you get to the western world the increase of wealth results in a very small increase in societal health or virtually none. But for the vast majority of the world improved material conditions makes a massive difference to individual freedom and societal health. Think of a family in India that does not have access to running water and has to spend hours each day going back and forth between a well and their house to get it think of the countless hours of time lost and the restriction of freedom. Once they get running water in their house all of a sudden they have a lot more freedom because they no longer have to spend hours each day fetching water. That time can be put towards other things. Think about how cell phones have helped to give more freedom to individuals, billions of people in Africa who were essentially cut off from the world all of a sudden can communicate in a way they could never do before. That is a massive increase in their freedom.

Please don't get me wrong by the way I do think the west has MAJOR issues and the Davos crowds and the elites are trying to take us down a one world government very dark path. But I think they are the ones who actually WANT "socialism" except it won't be socialism, they will never let the Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyns of this world win. They will say to the masses we will give you socialism, we will take on the rich but in reality they will just give us Corporatism, we're heading to Aldous Huxley's "A Brave New World" much faster than George Orwell's "1984".

The only solution is less government not more, more capitalism not less, more freedom not socialism or communism.
What about the novel possibility of there not ever having to be corn or soy fed beef because people are not trying to produce cheap food for quick profits? I see no logic in the arguments that follow something like capitalism and competition produce terrible circumstances locally and globally that only better capitalists can resolve by offering better products.

my original comment regarding societies that spent 3 hours a day “working” and still produced a surplus to enjoy recreationally points to the fact that your myth of savage nomads fighting each other over starvation is simply incorrect and that yes some cultures were brutal but were more likely that not organized around agriculture which required coercing large parts of the population to do work for long hours everyday. The savage anarchist like groups I spoke of were most likely sitting in hammocks smoking tobacco and eating tropical fruit for much of the day and worked very little to meet the needs of the entire group. No one was forcing anyone to do anything against their will. Regarding cell phones, I don’t even want to dive into 5G and radiation and toxic effects socially but it is nice to be able to discuss complex topics with strangers on the internet so yes it’s not all bad.

you seem to want to deny the reality and the facts regarding democratic centralism, people's democracy or that communism's eventual goal as set by Marx is anti-state and the "withering away of the state"? Or that the Soviet Union/China/DPRK had/have regular elections and multiple political parties? You claim everything that is wrong with the west is due to corporatism, I mean who do you think brought running water to your hypothetical Indian families, individual billionaires?

China has today a socialist economy with capitalism mixed into it, and China actually DID ONCE have full on modern capitalism with no socialism from at least 1911 to 1949 and the result was a horrific, genocidal disaster of mass starvation, illiteracy, foreign invasions and Japanese chemical/germ warfare, massive imported opium and heroin addiction, clearing mounds of dead bodies off the streets of Shanghai every morning, massive disease outbreaks so many horrors etc etc. The average lifespan of Chinese has nearly DOUBLED since communism took over in 1949. Pre revolutionary, capitalist China engendered the common saying in the West: "he hasn't got a Chinaman's chance".
 
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He's also on a carnivore diet and most likely finasteride to maintain his hair, how else would his hair not keep going from being on carnivore, propecia and eating only beef all day, yeah that is a hell of a combination. You'd be goooonnnneee...
 

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