I pit the naive "the system is EVIL!" nihlists who post here

Once you get beyond Hitler’s corporate financed domestic and foreign wars brought into power by brown shirted tea baggers, he had some good ideas.

Loved his dog, too.

Fuck morality. I’m talking all my favorite drugs and toys, good health and a comfortable place to sit among friends on pennies a day for me and my grandchildren, etc.

Like John the Baptist?

Heil!

Nor do I. Capitalism has coalesced wealth into a few greedy hands. If you can’t see it, you’re blind. Unrestrained corporate greed, in our present geologic blink of an eye, will undo 4+g years of evolution toward minds with compassionate hands. That’s nihilism. …

Cogent.

Drop the moral language then dude. You should be able to lay out some facts in a straightforward fashion. Give us some numbers and figures and comparison examples. It will convince more people.

If you keep saying crazy shit like “Once greed is dethroned as virtue” will you please stop arguing for things I like?

Compared to when?

How is a fundamental human characteristic (greed) applied to an entity made up of humans (corporations) going to undo another human trait (compassion)? Further, what the fuck does it have to do with anything?

See above.

I totally love GREED devoted to public as opposed to private interest.

What am I supposed to be looking at?

Whatever it is, it’s not beyond the end of your nose. The next 7 generations would be a start.

I retract everything I’ve said in this thread and will now use this moment to point and laugh.

Haw haw!

This one seems relevant.

Weird how Reagan lifted that, and applied it self-referentially during his own innaugural, isn’t it?
The right is still trotting the phrase out as if the old boy coined it.
Of course, Eldridge Cleaver sounds like some dire weapon that Nyarlathotep might carry upon his person, but that’s not only no excuse, it’s neither here nor there. :wink:

I…don’t know what you’re talking about.

It’s not beyond the end of my nose? Is it in my nose? Is whatever you’re talking about the reason I need a neti pot?

Oh, I don’t know… sounds like a nice make-work scheme. :stuck_out_tongue:

Now, I’m a pretty lefty kinda guy and I believe there is a place for some government make-work projects. With unemployment so high, a crappy economy, and a crumbling national infrastructure, I can see where we could benefit from connecting the dots.

But pulling a bunch of oil from the ground just to put it back down there someplace else seems like the classic Bill’s job is to dig a hole / Joe’s job is to fill it back in–rinse 'n repeat thing. I think it would go a little like this:
COLONEL: Okey-dokey! Welcome to the United States Make-work Enterprise–Underground Petroleum Corps (better known as the ‘USe ME UP Corps) orientation. Your work assignments are simple: Battalion A-- drill deep and get all the oil up from the deposits that you can. Battalion B-- transport this oil to the stockpile staging area. Battalion C-- dig deep and install the oil stockpile storage tanks. Battalion D-- pump the oil from the tankers in the staging area down into the storage tanks.

RECRUIT #1: What do we do then, sir?

COLONEL: Right! Even simpler! At that point, you all will be retrained for your new jobs and then be transported to your new work locations. Your new job assignments will then be as follows: Battalion A-- pump the oil up from the stockpile storage tanks. Battalion C-- transport this oil to the Petroleum / Empty Oil-field Reintroduction Integration Area-- a.k.a., PEORIA. Are any of y’all from Peoria?

**RECRUIT #2: ** I am, sir, but with all due respect-- I’m not sure this whole scheme is going to play very well in Peoria, sir.

**COLONEL: ** You just shut yer yap! What do you know anyway, corn-fed?! Now as I was sayin’-- Battalion D will be charged with installing new pipelines into the old oil-field drill shafts. And then Battalion B, you are going to be pumping all the oil back down into the Now-empty, Underground Completely ULtimate Oil Reservoirs—we call ‘em NUCULORs—where it can be rediscovered by government geologists, and then we can build new drilling rigs and get it all out again.

**RECRUIT #3: ** Question, sir. Um… I guess the first part makes sense… I guess… but I, uh… I thought the whole idea was to stockpile oil reserves underground. For when we run out of places to drill for more. Why are we going to just put it all back where it came from, sir?

**COLONEL: ** You thought…?!!?? Son, that was yer first mistake! You think at all, yer thinking too much! But seein’ as how most all of you are prolly making that same mistake, I’ll explain you all. First of all—the whole idea is to have a bunch of oil and have it underground. Doesn’t matter if it’s in a tank or at the bottom of some undersea drill-shaft, does it, recruit?

**RECRUIT #3: **I suppose not, sir.

COLONEL: ** That’s right. And for number two, if we do this right, it’ll mean we always have new oil bein’ discovered that we can drill up and then stockpile. And thirdly of all, it means all you slugs now have jobs, and therefore, big weekly checks you can spend on beer, shiny new TVs, and SUV’s. All of which keep up demand for the very thing that you all will be drilling, transporting, stockpiling, and then re-transporting and hiding away again so it can be re-drilled and re-stockpiled. Got it?
**
ALL RECRUITS (in unison):
Yes SIR! Brilliant sir! :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

I don’t think he’s ever seen your rug. You know, the one that tied the room together.

While mine is a radical opinion, it seems the only viable solution is reverting to small communities sustained solely by their respective habitats. If not evil, humanity (except for its dwindling traditional communities) is irresponsible. You bring intelligence up, so the fact is our race is just not smart enough to wield so much control over the planet and even to a certain extent, itself. As for the rich, one cannot deny that they are the ruling class in any society and that the present power of the ruling class is a product of the mass delusion that money is actually worth something in the real world. But I imagine you were looking for strokes less broad than those.

The system is not so much evil as it is indifferent - actively indifferent to us as individuals. Because so much of it is based on creating surplus value, each of us has to give more than we get back. Sometimes a lot more.

“The ruling class,” btw, are no longer leisured fatheads lighting cigars with $20 bills. They are competitive, numbers-driven, and in everything, they are a little bit hard. You work to make those numbers and help them compete, because if you don’t, you’re gone. As a result, everyone has to be hard, and so does life.

The ruling class is always rich because that’s what it means to be the ruling class. Duh.

As for the delusion that money is worth something, well, money is just a special kind of good that facilitates the exchange of other goods and services. It’s worth something because it fulfils an important economic function.

But the RC is not just rich. They have, in our era, adopted what basically were good ideals - hard work, competition, productivity - and bent them to the purpose of a numbers game. You do nothing for its own sake - at least not unless you can grow the numbers, and only as long as it doesn’t interfere with the numbers.