No, at elucidator.
hawthorne lets have an understanding, shall we? I’ll tell you what I think, as best I can, given my limitations. You are, of course, free to do likewise, indeed, we encourage it, this being a forum for debate, and all. I will not presume to tell you what you are thinking, and you will offer me the same courtesy. We’ll get along swimmingly.
The case of Sweden is brought up, not for the first time. Given the Scylla Dictum, that all socialist systems are failures, as in:
we face a conundrum: either Sweden is not socialist, thier society is a dismal failure, or Scylla is…not entirely correct.
As I mentioned before, I have been reading for lo, these many years, that Sweden was collapsing momentarily, any minute now, they would descend into chaos and anarchy and yet…there they are.
Beyond the generosity of a Providence deeply enamored of Vovlo making blondes, how can this be accounted for? And if little ol’ Sweden can successfully care for its citizenry, how is it we cannot? Or is it that we will not.
I was thinking Sweden when I wrote “woefully inadequate.”
I got a book somewhere about this, still in a box from moving, but basically Sweden is getting along in spite of it’s socialism, and basically because the country is full of, well, Swedes. The Swedes being so industrious they can make a go of it even with the shittiest economic system ever devised.
And Sweden’s not completely Socialist. It’s a blend of Socialism and Capitalism, but is also technically a kingdom.
Cool. If I get fast and loose with any economic stuff, please correct me.
Well, I think we can safely pass over the issue of monarchy. Cloth caps and bicycles, hardly imperial majesty.
So, if I understand you correctly, it is your contention that Sweden survives despite its woeful economic system, and not because of it. Thats as may be, of course, as no argument is offered as to why this should be so, save only that the Swedes are peculiarly industrious.
But my question remains: if they can do it, why can’t we? Or is it that you would prefer we not do it at all? We are, are we not, the richest and most powerful nation in history. Are these things beyond us, and yet not beyond lowly Sweden. And Denmark. And Holland.
Perhaps this hybrid of socialism and capitalism is the answer, that we may have and preserve our humanity and yet still have access to loud, shiny plastic crap.
Where do I sign?
Your entire line regarding pain and poverty fails to aknowledge that individuals who become wealthy cannot abstract the pain of other beings into themselves. In fact, they are abusing technology designed for the purpose of alleviating pain, against the process which allowed it to come into being; and they’re ill equipped with the sensory phenomenon to detect this process.
Another aspect of the wealthy is an automated indentured system; they are parrots rather than thinkers; and ultimately abusing hypocrisy at every turn without fully comprehending how suicide is more logical. Such corrupt logic would use a public painless suicide machine before they became too retarded to cast that pain upon others without feeling it. Actually, it is exploiting suicidal tension without having the sensory and/or logical organs to percieve it which creates pockets of wealth in the first place.
Sure, abolishing pain is not necessarily a good thing… however, you fail to consider that it is this very ability of the wealthy which makes them so – while forcing others to feel pain and not allowing them the equality of technology with which to express their ‘cowardice’ (they don’t have the sensory organs to percieve this existential consent issue, and as such cannot produce anything actually worth-while, they are necessarily time wasters) to this regard.
-Justhink
justhink, you may have posted an entirely brilliant analysis of our thread. You may have also posited the utterest balderdash. Trouble is, I can’t tell which.
With all due respect, would it be possible for you to re-express your contribution in more mundane terms? Or, at the least, give me some clue as to what an “existential consent issue” might be. It sounds like it might be quite insightful. Its not some technical economic term, is it? That wouldn’t be quite fair.
The capitalist question really boils down to one simple issue…
If, like machine guns which allow us to spereate ourselves from pain by 100’s of yards of space - we equally used pain depriving technology for painless suicide machines to be publically placed in each city - we would not have wealth hording. An equal use of technollogy with an equivilent application of rationality will create a more rational society. It is the witholding of balancing this fundamental imbalance which allows people to concentrate wealth in small pockets. They do this because they atre exploiting suicidal tension with regards to an equally painless means of exiting as wealth horders have for perpetrating their torture of other beings in to slavery with technology with removes them from rationality by almost complete desensitization.
People who horde capital to this degree are axiomically mentally handicapped and incapable of doing existential work which actually provides benefit to society. The only means to truly become wealthy is to assure that individuals who seek to collapse resources are not allowed a voice… their technology is then encrypted into being a resource aghainst the consent of the entire human population except the wealth horder. They by necessity abuse anything which provides a purpose to live.
-Justhink
I’ll work on it. These are not economic terms. I do know how to manufacture a society which allows wealth hording to occur; the causant agents are dependant upon an imbalance in the application of technology for personal use rathetr than using against others. There are other factors as well… I need to think how to put it in a more universal sense here.
-Justhink
Hmmmm. You may be right.
Thanks for the clarification. I wonder, though, how you would define this in terms of Marxist existentialism, and where it would fit on the continuum between Kierkegaardian “fear and trembling” and Thompsonian “fear and loathing”, given its distinct universalist slant.
And I don’t quite grasp how this might be translated into a non-Eudlidian environment of n-space, where (n = -1.)
Euclidian. Non-Euclidian.
Drat.
The only way that technology gets abstracted is by solving for consent. The only way that this technolgy is meaningful is if it collapses a resource. Wealth hording societies exist because they corrupt technology with a violation of consent to create a slavery against the consent of the population and physical/natural law in general. The issue here is that wealth horders cannot actually abstract anything worthwhile into human existence.
People who solve for consent collapse the resources necessary to allow wealth accumulation. Weath accumulation only comes from corrupting this technology by violating consent.
Without suicide machines, they are too far detetched from the existential pressure of what it means to be a rational human being to get it. They don’t really have much of a sensory organ to detect this degree of rational application of human mind.
They are so seperated from rationality, that they are the equivilent of a being who does not believe anything at all - and yet chooses to eat simply because that’s their hobby - this being totally irrelevamnt to the fact that it causes them to not starve to death. Wealthy individuals are wholly seperated from existential pressure and find themselves in a position to corrupt the existential work to abstract more technolgy - so that they can produce even more wealth against the consent of rational human beings. It does not require work to become a wealthy being in this society.
-Justhink
Human spiritual emptiness is not necessarily defined by wealth, or the lack of it. Anyone who is entirely absorbed by the necessity of survival has no option to explore. Starvation annihilates all the higher functions, including compassion, rationality, and the awareness of the Thou. As Ghandi remarked, “God has no right to appear to the hungry in any other form than Bread.”
There is nothing noble, or uplifting, in suffering, it is entirely despicable and should not be willingly tolerated, let alone inflicted. That is not to say that abstinence, as in fasting, cannot be salutory, but it must be willed, not imposed by circumstance or others. Otherwise, it is mere brute suffering. As nature abhors a vacuum, a good man loathes suffering.
OH, sorry elucidator…
Existential: Exist, doesn’t exist.
It primarily is calculated against consent, vs. being wholly programmed. In this sense, it boils down to the very meaning to live.
Existential processing is the use of variables of suicide and consented inaction with regards to possibilities. Primarily, an existential processing of an event would be the belief that there are seperate things which exist and can be referenced from each-other. It calculates possibility from contradictions and non-contradictions.
It is a contradiction to state that you believe in absolutely nothing, and then proceed to eat. By detecting such contradictions, logic is formalized to abstract a field of rationality which has a perimeter. Existential work is that excavation of this field of rationality.
The only reason people excavate this field is to validate consent with regards to their logic for being rather than deciding to not be – i.e suicide. The concept of suicide is what allows our form of recusion - taking ones life with a prupose, living ones life with a purpose; technology abstraction as well with regards to another entity: nature, or natural law which can be depended upon.
It requires existential work to collapse a resource. Someone like Tesla for example was ruined for his project to cast a low level magnetic field over the entire surface of the earth to allow free use of communications technology, the energy of which was collected from solar wind in the upper atmosphere. (Tesla understood that communications was the key to peace). This technology was de-funded and his project was destroyed.
This is where mental retardation and capitalism enter the picture, against the consent of all involved except for themselves.
The technology was corrupted, so that it could be sold in little incriments… the success of individuals was now based upon their ability to use this time saving communications technology… and the use of it was rendered into a resource, a resource which allows wealth hording to occur.
-Justhink
Thanks for clearing that up. 
Apologies.
Let me put it this way:
If someone created a microscopic organism which feeds human beings automatically, so that it is impossible for anyone on this earth to starve ever again…
This is the anti-process of capitalism. This is the process of doing hard work to actually uncover something new about this earth which all people can benefit from. This requires rationality and existential effort. The existential effort is in the form of querying nature in a means which is actual, rather than delusional.
If something contradicts itself, it is deselected… because it contradicts the purpose to do it. It contradicts the purpose of the human being to do the act. People who contradict themselves to this degree are disassociated with the pressure of what life represents with regards to a value.
A value can be as a simple as the number one, an agreed upon symbol.
What existential workers do is abstract values which are so natural that nobody can deny its purpose. Existential workers solve for consent. They collapse the resources necessary to allow consent violation to even manifest. This requires a very careful observation of nature and the discipline of not contradicting ones self.
Irrational societies corrupt existential work and make sure that consent is never allowed to be solved for. They go out of their way to block access to something which technologically allows more consent to be actualized.
They’re not really going out fo their way, they’re just to dumb to have faith in existential work, to realize that rationality exists.
What wealthy individuals do to aquire their wealth is so absurdly simple to those who do actual work, that it is seen as meaningless. Wealthy individuals are not the cream any human crop; they are incapable of processing consent; incapable of considering how to abstract something worthwhile of a life-cycle which rationally solves as suicide. They are not rational however.
-Justhink
Well, how can one argue against arguments like this? It sounds basically like tautology to me. When things go bad in a system we don’t like, it is because the system sucks. When things go good in a system we don’t like, it is despite the system. When things go bad in a system we like, it is again despite the system. And, finally, when things go well in a system we like, it is because the system is wonderful. End of argument.
And, your point here is…? I don’t think anyone here was arguing for a socialist economy. As I recall, we were just suggesting that it might be a good idea to have enough of a safety net that people are not starving on the streets and might even have enough energy left after just trying to survive to actually better themselves.
Indeed, when I visited Sweden (admittedly only for a day…I’ve spent considerably more time in Denmark), private enterprise seemed to be alive and well.
Rational people devote capital to collapsing the resource which allows it to accumulate.
That’s the basic summary.
In a society which is irrational, this resource will be horded against the consent of what is a rational purpose to exist on this earth.
-Justhink
Well so far the only argument you’ve brought up in favor of Socialism is mentioning that Sweden exists. No. Wait. I did that.
If you think Sweden is so great, please tell me all about it. I’ve made an argument. You haven’t
I suppose we could drive ourselves towards mediocrity if we wish. Sweden is a small country with a small populace and a small economy specializing in exports.
The question is twofold. Do we look at Sweden and decide “Hey, let’s do that. That’s pretty good!”
If we do, we have to consider that Sweden as an economy is a special case. You have workers like Germans or the Swiss, very cheap power due to luck of geography and nuclear infrastructure. The poverty burden placed upon the Swedes has tended to be very low historically.
Additionally, it is not an economy in a vaccum. Neither is hours, but our economy is much more self-contained than the Swedes. It would be most accurate to say the Swedes occupy a niche within the larger European economy.
Nevertheless Sweden has its problems with social programs taking up 45% of GDP (from the top of my head) and about 1/2 the people working for the government or these programs. While the bottom rung of the standard of living is much higher than the US, they are having a growing percentage of people occupying that rung, living subsidized lives to one degree or another.
Sweden has an acknowledged problem of capital, and wealth fleeing the country because of the tax burden, and is working pretty hard to try and correct this. Sweden was pretty close to the brink of disaster even after the booming 80s, and managed to stage an admirable comeback in the 90s. This comeback was in large part fueled by high technology. To make a loose analogy, Sweden was the silicon valley of Europe in terms of telecommunications and wireless innovation. This has unfortunately proved to be just as much a hyperbolous venture as our dotcom boom/bust, and now Sweden has fallen into rising unemployment and deficit spending again, with deep concerns about inflation.
Sweden has a lot of things going for it that have enabled it to so far shoulder the yoke of its social programs.
Probably a realistic way to look at it is that Sweden is a failure. They’ve been blessed in a number of ways to occupy several extremely lucrative and privileged niches within the larger European economy, and they’ve still managed to screw it up. Sweden is facing serious problems. The bulk of productivity is done by a diminishing percentage of the population which is likely to be both unable and unwilling to carry the burden in the near future.
Without the Socialistic programs I would hypothesize that Sweden would be doing much better, its standard of living would be much higher and the larger European economy would have benefitted as well had it not been for this counterproductive burden.
We do not occupy such a niche within a larger economy as Sweden, nor do their results appear encouraging enough to suggest that emulation would be a desirable thing.
Then too, Sweden derives a lot of benefits from the US economy. We tend to be both the market and technological innovaters that the Swedes feed off of.
The VCRs, TVs, Cell phones and Volvos they sell go to us. We support the Swedish economy in this way, and we also do it through medicine. Once socialized medicine gets in place within a country innovation in that area basically disappears.
Maybe it is. There is no reason to think so, though, and a lot of evidence to say that such a combination is likely to impoversh our entire nation.
As to where you sign up, Sweden, Cuba, the remains of the USSR, China and all those other super economies.