[Preechr]

I'm gonna go ahead and respond point for point, but there's about to be a lot of repetition here. You are hearing things I'm not actually saying, and ignoring a lot of what I AM saying. We haven't actually gotten to the point at which you will decide to disagree completely with me yet, so I'm gonna take a run at this and then try to re-engage davin.

Originally Posted by kahljorn

I see, here's where I think we come to some differences.

I enjoyed your idealisations and find that in some capacities it's true, but I believe you are mistaking the idea of Ideal for Present.

I'm gonna take a wild, screaming leap at what this means. When I talk about the ideal society and it's structure, I am referencing a blueprint mostly just contained in my head. It is based in various philosophies and studies, though much of it is just crap I've made up. That being said, I'm fairly confident in it, but since I'm discussing it with random folks I meet here and there, one could surmise that I'm willing to take criticism on it. You'd have to know me a bit better to realize that I take criticism fairly well, and that discussions like this one are how I hack out the details of my general ideas.

There are two ways you should look at my presentation here in order to understand where I'm going with it. Yes, I am speaking of an idealized, possibly romantic and unrealistic version of a future that could happen... But I am also basing my ideas in extrapolations of history. You already know that I'm a big fan of the origins of the great American experiment. I love the Founding Fathers, the Constitution... that whole point in history. Think about that real hard and read very carefully what I'm about to type for you.

Up until that point in history, humans were at the tail end of a pretty fucked up path. The ideas America was founded upon were not just something a few colonists pulled out of their asses one day after drinking a bit too much at a pool party. The concepts were revolutionary only because they were actually implemented into the formation a big new government. The Constitutional Conventions were basically just a bunch of smart guys sitting around discussing the newest concepts and the most revolutionary ideas in governence and seeing if they could squeeze them all into one cohesive plan for a baby government.

They pretty much pulled it off. It was pretty cool. Remember the little Saturday morning cartoon about the Shot Heard Round the World? That's what they were talking about.

Unfortunately, we have since somewhat strayed from the path we originally committed to forge for the world. We were doing very well up until the Civil War, but we took our black eye and got right back to business. We once again struck to our idealistic and naive path. Unfortunately, a few things got in our way, and combined with the recent experience with war and a few weirdos that got a kick out of it's effect on the people as well as the profits such a thing might generate for a few well-invested weirdos, we got ourselves mixed up in WW1.

Even more unfortuante for us, as well as what might have been the world's more immediate future, another seed of destruction was also being sewn into the fabric of our experiment: Communism. There was a reason that particular style of government was in such fashion about that time. It was the new "war." It was the newest innovation in slavery. The weirdo war-profiteers we had developed here in the states were just now catching on to the concept and beginning to find influence in our government, and their European brothers were already moving on to the next big way to eliminate freedom.

By the end of WW2, our experiment in Libertarianism was under attack by two well-formed enemies, one within and one external, and they had learned to work together.

Now, our government is in the control of folks that have developed a plan for combining the best elements of both plans for the domination of mankind. I'm not saying Bush is that guy, nor am I saying he's an ignorant or well-meaning pawn or on the other side.
I am saying that the concepts and precepts of Socialism had been imbedded at that point so well into the fabric of our society over here, at a time when Americans were at the lowest point yet in their diligence for and understanding of the experiment in freedom they represented, that arguments against it just were not strong enough.

We have yet to recover.

Now we are spreading Socialism through War. Cool, ain't it? We are funding it through leashing capitalism, which is just another way of saying economic freedom, too...

Again, I am NOT suggesting any sort of government conspiracy here. Make no mistake: This is a Democratic time in which we are living. "We the People" are responsible for all of our current events, just as are all of the citizens of the modern world. Within us lies the blame for our failures so far, just as in us lies the solutions. Either way, the future of the world is up to us.

Thank you if you read through that.

Originally Posted by kahljorn

If you imagine business a priori, you could imagine two people engaging in the simple task of bartering. One person has something the other wants, and the other person has something the One has. They trade. Both of them are happy because they got what they want. This scenario instead implies Desire and Aquisition. Then it becomes a situation that is not merely one-sided like you seem to be postulating.

That's your entire problem is that you seem to imagine this as a one-way situation involving only one circumstance.

I'm not exactly sure, again, what it is you are saying or where you are getting it from.

I'm trying to imagine a one-sided situation using the framework of your alternate example, but I guess I'm just coming up short in the imagination department tonight...

Instead of doing more of that, maybe I'll just re-explain my previosly stated position: Doing business with one another is, as I see it, you competing with someone else for some sort of value you might gain. In the world of business, business-people assign a name for this value: Money. Cash. Rather than fully explain to you, in yet another tangent, how a Mom-and-Pop grocery store can be sold for financial remuneration, I'm gonna define just exactly what I mean by money.

It's often said that money is the root of all evil, but I consider that an incredibly cynical point of view. There's another old saying: "Time is Money," and I like that one better. I REALLY like the corollary to that one: Money is Time. Just as miles are a unit of measurement of distance, money is a unit of measurement of time. I'm all over that crap, man!

From there, I can imagine a world without inequity. The only variable is how happy you can make yourself feel about whichever of each you have. Human unhappiness, I'll propose, is more the root of all evil than is collected time. A man without a job generally has no money, but a man might trade some of his time for money by getting a job. Past that, that man might invest his time wisely and maximize the money he takes in trade for it.

There is always the other option, however. I hate to bring up Brazil again, but it serves as a great example here. Now, I'm gonna introduce you to the concept of complimental currency, to which I was introduced by a very liberal professor of economics. In many poor countries, the people have developed a method for attaining certain things that their culture requires of them yet their financial situation might obstruct. Again, a good example is the Carnivale celebrations of South America...

These are celebrations that honor the poor of that continent. These folks have established themselves in communities, and each community contributes to the overall celebration. Here's the kicker, though: None of the communities want to be perceived as less than any of the others. Common sense will tell you that all of these communities have different economic pictures, but competition requires that they each contribute to Carnivale equally.

Those that do not have as much money as others to invest invest their TIME to a larger proportion. Those that have more money to invest save their time. Everybody has a good time at Carnivale.

You want another example? The people of Japan honor their elderly much moreso than do we in the West. It is expected of the young to care for the old, yet their society has also adopted a very aggressive view of commercial activity, which often requires a producer to live wherever she can find the best job. The monkey wrench in there is that grandma and grandpa won't go with you to wherever your new job takes you, and yet you are still expected to provide for them to a point and GIVE THEM THEIR BATHS.

Notice, this is not a poor society I'm talking about here, either. The same sort of cultural clash with economics exists here, and again, the time is money (money is time) thing sorts it all out. If I leave my grandaprents in Tokyo to work in Nagasaki, and you leave Nagasaki to go to college in Tokyo, we can arrange to trade time spent bathing each other's elderly as if we were swapping yen or even putting money in the bank to pay for future needs required of an elderly relative that's not in need just yet of such services.

It's a really interesting diversion. Go Google the words: fureai kippu. I'll get to the point...

If you want to say that I think of commerce as a one sided situation, I'll go with that. I think it is, because I am honest enough with myself to understand that I can only ever hope to see life through my own eyes, and I see business as me making money for whatever reason I personally desire to do so. I can only assume you would do the same.

In that light, maybe I do believe commerce a one sided situation. Were you suggesting that I venture out into the hard, cold world of the daily grind worried that I make sure each of my competitors do better than me?

God, I hope not...

Originally Posted by kahljorn

"Sure, they'd need more and better education to be small business owners, executives or scientists, but shouldn't you be pointing at our own government's motivations and, ahem, government run education system when you start to play your blame game? "

Sure. I've said plenty of times that part of the problems here is that we have a shitty education system. As one of the most modern and supposedly innovative nations, as you put it, we should be capable of bringing up healthy people, right? I mentioned that in another thread not long ago.

I said we were inoovative by nature. I inferred that our educational system and our economic model is built in such a way as to leech that out of us. I believe in the "American Spirit." We are all related to people that threw their lives away and moved to a totally different part of the world in search of a dream. Those that belong to families that stuck around in Crap-town, waiting on a dream to come to them, are not cut from the same cloth as we are. Additionally, I am verifying my supposition by simply looking at the record history has made available to me and sitting down to figure out what made what happened so. I tried to do that from an unbiased perspective, but I might not have succeeded...

Originally Posted by kahljorn

I don't really know why the government does it, but they seem to like people stupid.

THAT just made my sig, dude.

Originally Posted by kahljorn

But the simple fact is we don't, for some reason people in this country are barely educated. Aren't we one of the only countries in the world who charges for college? Thanks "Capitalism!". Sure, there's options for financial aid and such, but who wants to be in debt most of their lives? Most people are too stupid to find grants or some kind of cheap system. Why aren't the colleges teaching them how to get them..?

Why indeed?

Wait, let's start over at the beginning of that... I see the need in this because I've already read the rest of your post and I can see a big idea you are missing.

Let me ask you a question: What in this world have you ever had that you valued yet which was given to you for nothing? Think real hard about the way in which I phrased that question, please. What is nothing? I'm not talking about something that was given to you for the price of something which you valued. Nothing. Remember, I consider time to be on an equal value level as money. If you spend a lot of time with your grandpa, for example, and he leaves you his time-share in his will, you value that property in relation to the time you two spent together.

I know I could spend a lot of time droning on and on within this thread of logic, however I have become accustomed to your style of communication enough to understand that you won't get this the first time, and in deference to the other readers (and davin as well as for the sake of time,) I'm gonna move on, leaving you with another phrase to ponder: "Found Money."

Originally Posted by kahljorn

What was it you said, they are more interested in 'Profit'?

I'll take this down a purely pointless angle to elicit emotional response: what if our children's toys were made by people who are "Profit".

That's totally NOT sig-worthy. What does that even mean?

Originally Posted by kahljorn

Think about our children, good sir, and the idea that their education is mostly maintained by people our for profit.

I would propse to you that our government run educational system is run for the purposes of government. What is it that I told you constitutes the currency of government? POWER. Public education is a function of the transfer of power.

Now, it used to be that education was intended to leave one with a well-rounded knowledge base on many levels. Not so, anymore. Now, we feed our children directly into the chipper-shredder of the business world, and the educators have taken up the flag of "training our kids to make money and be successful."

Is that what you believe you got from you education? At what point were you trained to balance a checkbook in school? Please contrast that date with the date on which you received your first credit card offer in the mail.

Hopefully, you can see that government funded education is only ever gonna hope to leech power from you; to enslave you. The only hope we have comes from education for which you might actually have had to sacrifice something.

Originally Posted by kahljorn

Which brings me to my next point; we're talking about a country that had at least some vested interest in oil obtained through a war by a presidency who's company is reaping the rewards?

Ok, geggy...

Originally Posted by kahljorn

How do you expect educated people and a good education system with a government that is more reliant on profit than quality?

Easy. Get government out of the education industry and give it back over to the people most interested in making sure our kids don't wind up slaves to someone: our parents.

Originally Posted by kahljorn

If the government's job is to make profits...

IT'S NOT! GOVERNMENT EXISTS TO ACCUMULATE POWER.

Originally Posted by kahljorn

...How is it going to restrict business?

IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO!

Did you read the thing I wrote about the three pillars of society? Business is one, Government is a separate one. We don't want to form an exchange rate between money and power.

Originally Posted by kahljorn

That's the entire method for republicans, right, the trickle down effect or whatever. How does that work when companies are relocating for more profits?

You have yet to grasp that what happens is not exactly best summed up as those who propose to sum it up for us wish to do so. You hear R's talk about trickling down and you contrast that with the D's summation of reality to such ideology, and without any additonal data garnered from some sort of logical supposition of your own creation, it's easy to see how you could jump to the conclusion that those that do not wish to give you stuff for free... stuff such as a job... would decide instead to give your job to someone on which they could could save a bit of salary.

Ever considered earning a living?

Originally Posted by kahljorn

With philosophies like that you're going to breed a nation of starbucks employees and business owners/operators.

You gotta think that through some more. I'm saying that our economy would be healthiest when based in highly paid though highly educated (continuously) innovators and supported by varying levels of service entrepreneurs. Remember: Time is money. Each of us can choose to trade however we wish in whatever way makes us happiest.

Rather than being a narrow set of options, we'll actually have the most career freedom possible. Get a corporate job in today's America if you need more background on where we're currently headed.

You know what? I'm gonna stop going point for point for you for the sake of pithity. I'll continue to respond, but I'VE GOT TO GET TO BED. Money is time, y'know...

Please let me know where this has got you headed, but tomorrow night I'm going to respond to davin's earlier comments first, in hopes of drawing him back into the conversation... no offense...

I stand by all of my earlier tangents, however, as the best way I know of to have contributed to this discussion.

HAVE A NICE DAY.