On 29 Aug 2004 10:11:12 -0500,

On 28 Aug 2004 17:27:18 -0500, LP <whirl_pool@nospam.hotmail.com>
wrote:

On Sat, 28 Aug 2004 11:56:34 -0400, "JTEM" <jaytem@gaydar.co.uk>
wrote:

"Fred Stone" <fstone69@earthling.com> wrote

If you think Clinton's "peace and prosperity" weren't
just preludes to war, poverty, joblessness and so on
you never will get it.

Go on, detail this for us. Map it out. Explain yourself.

Oops, sorry, for a moment there I forgot I was talking
to a shameless neo-con & moron.

Production = prosperity
The effect is not immediate, it is accumulative.

Any time you reward non production, you end up with dearth.

Capitalism = prosperity
Socialism = dearth.

dearth of what? and who is advocating that the government take over
all the businesses (the real meaning of socialism - don't any of you
idiots ever look up anything)?

Nope sorry. Production does nothing if no one can buy it. You
haven't noticed? Lots of computer companies wnet down because no on
was buying their product.

Lots of Transactions = prosperity. Lots of jobs and security for
everyone. A well off bottom and middle class insure transactions.
Wealth means you have enough money, so extra money to the wealthy and
no demand for products, means they just sit on it.

The bottom and middle class always have needs, so extra money to them
means they will buy their needs. This is why you concentrate on
giving the tax cuts to the lower classes, not the rich.

In one form or another, a zero-sum equation is probably the most
common systematic argument against a really free market of voluntary
exchange. The essential basis of this argument, whatever its
particular focus, is a 'zero-sum game' of wealth, in which everyone
cuts pieces of a 'wealth pie,' if you will, which can only be sliced
so many ways and is only so large. According to this, any addition to
the amount of wealth must have been balanced by its removal from
somewhere else. The additions and subtractions add up to consistent
amount. Wealth may not be created, only redistributed, the gain and
loss adding up to zero.

If one believes this, it is perfectly understandable to object to
anyone being richer than someone else (since they have necessarily
appropriated more than their 'fair share'), or to think the wealthier
western world has to be exploiting the rest of the world since it has
a greater piece of the pie, or that profit is unfair because it must
come at the expense of someone else even in a voluntary exchange, or
to believe in the use of force to 'redress the balance.' These things
follow from the zero-sum game of wealth if it is accurate. However,
the worst of this phenomenon of belief may be that in some cases,
these conclusions themselves are desired, and the zero-sum economics
have been discovered as a justification. I believe that to have been
the case with many communist economists such as Marx, who really
wanted to be justified to hate capitalists, since they already did.
Before discussing any specifics, it is worth noting initially that
this claim is characteristic of pessimism, and while dealing with it,
it is wise to keep in mind that the proclamation of this kind of limit
may have less to do with a realistic perception of the world than a
pessimistic desire for such a limit to exist.

Capitalism in a free market is not a zero-sum game, and exchange is
not limited to zero-sum equations, for multiple reasons. First, wealth
is subjective in amount and kind according to individual
understandings of value. There cannot be a fixed amount of wealth in
the world if the wealth that matters to each person is subjectively
different. Certainly, physical commodities and resources like gold and
wood and food and stone are not overly subjective in the way we
experience them, and they are not interchangeable depending on who you
are. But their value to each of us does vary, and it is subjective,
depending on who we are. The same is true of the products produced
from them, and their various applications. There is also great
variation in the worth of what is physical depending on what we have
the knowledge to accomplish. To experienced workers today, iron ore
means tools and girders to build into the sky. But to our distant
ancestors, iron ore was just another rock. In the hands of a skilled
doctor today a knife can save a life, but once people only knew that
knives were good for cutting up food and each other. Before papyrus
and sheepskin became the first kinds of paper and made literature and
accounting possible, they were just reeds and a way to keep warm.
Obviously the vast difference in value has come from the subjective
realm of mental capital. Much of what is often called culture is
mental capital, such as art and science, and even every idea or
concept, with perhaps a value which is even more subjective.
Individual human capacities and abilities count as well, and those are
certainly not measurable statistically.

All that matters is that someone values a thing, and then it is real
wealth to them. Of course, some people believe that capital which is
not physical is not 'real.' But for proof that ideas and concepts can
have as much, or much more, real impact than quantities of physical
resources, consider the difference that knowledge and technique makes
in efficiency, and in what can be accomplished with resources. Once
all people spent virtually every waking moment trying to feed and
protect themselves with the tools ready at hand. They had all the same
basic physical resources. The only important difference is mental;
certainly there were fewer people alive to build wealth in the past
than there are people building wealth of all kinds now, but
exceedingly more value per person is being created today, thanks to
the accumulated exchange of mental capital and mental resources. If we
were instead billions of cave-dwellers, we would probably still
measure wealth in having enough to eat and a fire for warmth. The main
reason that some still do is that the profits of unhindered mental and
material production and trade have been denied them through the true
oppression and exploitation of modern-day societies, which are not
free at all.

Another reason the zero-sum equation does not apply is that even
according to a given standard of wealth, wealth can be created. Look
about you at everything that exists now, all the technology, art,
literature, and the material farms and cities, from homes and
skyscrapers to gardens and fields. Once people lived in only natural
shelter, hunting and gathering, and had none of this. So where did it
all come from, if wealth cannot be created? Gains can be made. Effort
can accomplish and what is accomplished can accumulate.

Labor is often considered to be the basis of wealth according to
zero-sum economics. If all labor is equal in value objectively, if the
products produced by less labor are exchanged for what required more
hours of labor to make, then that profit is exploitation. In the eyes
of many people this has condemned all capitalists as exploiters of
their employees, and millions have been killed in the world out of
revenge and jealousy, in the name of the 'fairness' of this theory.
But it is utterly wrong. It could only be right if value were
completely objective, and if the contribution of every person in work
is always exactly identical. Labor was closer to commonality when more
people did very similar work, such as agricultural farm labor. But
labor is in fact highly dissimilar, especially today. It includes
inherent and learned talents, experience, individual flair, and many
other subjective qualities. It is also worth more or less in
subjective value according to the circumstances of the world around
the worker. Labor in the strictest physical sense is also a far less
significant kind of capital than mental capital, which means the
difference between making piles out of sand and making glass out of
it, as well as the difference between making glass out of sand and
making silicon chips.

The specific justification for a zero-sum game of wealth is often the
connection of wealth to a limited amount of resources in the world, a
zero-sum game of resources. This claim may be extended to anything
from arable land to food production to energy production, to any or
all natural resources used by mankind. If this is true, the very use
of these limited resources for profit is exploitation of other people.
But in practice and in history, every time a limit is found, someone
will invent a way to surpass it as long as people are allowed to
achieve freely. For example, if the ability to grow food based on
available land really stayed constant, this planet could never support
billions of people as it does now, with irrigation, hydroponics, and
other modern farming techniques effectively creating more cultivated
land. It would seem there are always better methods for
accomplishment. There are always ways of converting one substance into
another more useful one, and even ways of exchanging energy for matter
and matter for energy. The only real scientific limits that apparently
exist involve the amounts of matter and energy in the universe, and
these are hardly limits that we can relate to as human beings.

"[T]he idea of distributing everything evenly is based on a theory
that there’s only X amount of stuff in the world, that somehow we took
it away from the poorer countries in the first place, and therefore we
should give it back to them. But this theory doesn’t take into account
the real reason for the differences between countries - that is, the
development of new techniques for growing food, the development of
machinery to grow food and do other things, and the fact that all this
machinery requires the concentration of capital. It isn’t the stuff,
but the power to make the stuff, that is important. But I realize now
that these people were not in science; they didn’t understand it. They
didn’t understand technology; they didn’t understand their time."

- Richard Feynman

One popular conviction is that the third world has been exploited by
the rest of the world through the pillaging of its resources. There is
some truth to this - but not due to a zero-sum of resources.
Particularly under the application of the fascism of the past -
mercantilism, colonialism, trade monopolies, tariffs, and so on -
people in the third world were exploited through force, and their
economic progress was set back. The chief means of their exploitation
had little to do with shipping more substance out of these lands than
was sent back; actually these people were not allowed to innovate and
improve using mental capital, and profit accordingly. For example, in
India under British colonial occupation, the most weighty leverage for
exploitation was in only allowing the Indians to sell raw materials
such as indigo dye to the British, prohibiting them from the more
profitable work such as producing and dying clothing to sell. This was
reserved for British monopolies, which sold finished goods back to the
Indians. Even today international trade 'management' interferes using
force, preventing some people from prospering even if their own
government will let them alone. But this has nothing to do with
voluntary exchange. It is economic fascism and tyranny, not simply the
use of resources in a free market. Within a free market of
individuals, people from any land will always be able to accomplish
and prosper far more than those bound by artificial limits.

In a free market, evenly distributing what resources already exist or
what is created is both impossible and undesirable. It does not matter
that different definitions of capital belong to people in uneven
amounts. In fact, this is quite natural because people are different
in their abilities and interests. What matters is that in a free
market, each person is more likely to achieve his own goals than in
any other kind of economy - which includes greater average prosperity
as well as relative riches in the hands of those who have made this
their goal and achieved it.

The above article is from:
The Economic Zero-Sum Fallacy
http://www.promethea.org/Misc_Compositions/PrometheanCapitalism/Zero-Sum.html

---------------------------------------
Other relevant articles.

Capitalism and Socialism
http://www.libertyhaven.com/theoreticalorphilosophicalissues/conservatism/capisocialism.html

Government Redistribution Impoverishes the Poor
http://www.libertyhaven.com/politicsandcurrentevents/taxesandtaxation/govredisimpov.html

What is Capitalism?
http://www.rationalmind.net/essay/52capitalism

The Real Price of a Free Lunch
http://capmag.com/article.asp?ID=3852

What does Competition mean under Capitalism?
http://capmag.com/article.asp?ID=241

"Fred Stone" <fstone69@earthling.com> wrote in message
news:Xns9553D2F30525Cfstone69@207.69.154.201...

"towelie" <bugoNOSPAM@hotmail.com> wrote in news:2pciicFifh5gU1@uni-
berlin.de:

TV's Fred Stone wrote:

"towelie" <bugoNOSPAM@hotmail.com> wrote in
news:2pc9v7Fj5aptU1@uni-berlin.de:

TV's Eris wrote:

They have had almost 4 years to view his ability to lead this
country. War, increased poverty, joblessness, people losing
medical insurance. Under Clinton peace and prosperity for
everyone. I don't get it.

This is the same 47% with such low intelligence they buy into the
false claims (Swift Boat Captains, et.al.) against Kerry instead
of looking at the issues. The black-and-white thinkers, if you
will.

It doesn't take much research into the issues to find out that the
false claims are the ones that Kerry is making in defending
against the SBV's. Not to mention that his panicy reactions
against them aren't exactly a sign of leadership.

What does any of that have to do with the issues?

It shows what kind of leader Kerry really is.

So whose intelligence is lower?

Right-wingers such as yourself.

Odd then that I can see through the spin and you can't.

Well granted, you're certainly much more familiar with spin given that
your political party is entirely based upon it.

"Fred Stone" <fstone69@earthling.com> wrote in message
news:Xns9553D2F30525Cfstone69@207.69.154.201...

"towelie" <bugoNOSPAM@hotmail.com> wrote in news:2pciicFifh5gU1@uni-
berlin.de:

TV's Fred Stone wrote:

"towelie" <bugoNOSPAM@hotmail.com> wrote in
news:2pc9v7Fj5aptU1@uni-berlin.de:

TV's Eris wrote:

They have had almost 4 years to view his ability to lead this
country. War, increased poverty, joblessness, people losing medical
insurance. Under Clinton peace and prosperity for everyone.
I don't get it.

This is the same 47% with such low intelligence they buy into the
false claims (Swift Boat Captains, et.al.) against Kerry instead of
looking at the issues. The black-and-white thinkers, if you will.

It doesn't take much research into the issues to find out that the
false claims are the ones that Kerry is making in defending against
the SBV's. Not to mention that his panicy reactions against them
aren't exactly a sign of leadership.

What does any of that have to do with the issues?

It shows what kind of leader Kerry really is.

So whose intelligence is lower?

Right-wingers such as yourself.

Odd then that I can see through the spin and you can't.

Well granted, you're certainly much more familiar with spin given that
your political party is entirely based upon it.

turk