Mr. Bell wasn’t trying to invent the telephone, he was trying to invent a device to help deaf people, he had a life-long commitment to helping the deaf. Swing and a miss, strike one.
I just read a book biography on Mr. Bell and his motivations are a little complicated than what a wikipedia article would reveal.
He wanted to marry Mabel Hubbard who happened to be daughter of one of Bell’s early investors/mentors. Her father was concerned that Alexander would not have the financial resources to give Mabel a comfortable life.
Alexander was very aware of possible future income from patents from his work. He was also aware of losing the commercial battle based on progress being made by competitors.
When the telephone proved itself, that was when Alexander had the confidence to ask Mabel’s father for approval of marriage.
So, yes the inconvenient and impure concept of “money” was on his mind. Was he “greedy” for thinking of how to attain material wealth for himself? I guess you could look at it that way. We need more greedy bastarads like him.
Yes. And I support targeted short-term cash infusions. I don’t support just across-the-board cash handouts based on income, or long-term programs that a person could benefit from their whole lives.
So, your case then is that we should encourage greed because it might accidentally and unintentionally produce good results? Well, then, what do we do when it doesn’t?
Is there something wrong with that? So what if my teaching people to fish also benefits my fishing pole business?
Is theresome society that doesn’t run on greed? You think [communist] Russia doesn’t run on greed? Of course none of us are greedy, it’s always the other guy [or other social class] who’s greedy…The only cases where the masses have escaped from grinding poverty…is when they have had capitalism and largely free trade.
What does reward virtue? Do you think the commissars reward virtue? Do American presidents reward virtue? Do they pick their appointees on the basis of virtue or on the basis of their political clout? Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest?
Well, I don’t use my time to ladle soup at homeless shelters or knit blankets for the homeless. What I do with my time, when I’m not at my job, is to work at home, making widgets that I sell online. It’s a niche product, has gotten a good reception, and I hope to grow my business.
Yes, my greed is compelling me to spend my free time running a table saw and screwing in hinges, but as an added bonus, I will create jobs. In addition, my widget is a tool to be used almost exclusively by home party sales people, which is generally made up of other low-to-middle class people who are working hard to improve their lot in life.
What do you suppose is the return on my contributions, versus if I just used that time to ladle out soup?
I’m sorry, I misunderstood, I had no idea you were witnessing for the Mammonite Church. Reform, or Orthodox?
Ah yes of course. The superior religion is the one that accepts all the whiners and complainers about being poor.
Send me a pamphlet about it. I’m open to indoctrination.
So… for example… you might approve of the following?
1 - unemployment benefits as currently structured to help bolster a person’s income while they search for work? (Time limited and, while somewhat based on income, there’s a definite cut-off far below the median wage in my recent experience)
2 - microloans to help start small businesses
3 - educational grants, scholarships, or loans
4 - support for child care when a single parent goes to school or has to work that ends when the children reach normal schooling age
But you wouldn’t approve of food stamps or soup kitchens except on an emergency basis? (I’m thinking of last fall when we had families in my area simultaneously hit by a tornado and flood out shortly afterward, thereby destroying or severely damaging their homes and possessions, or after a house fire, when people need shelter and food for at least a few days until they can start sorting things out)
Legally free, yes. But practically free? There’s a reason why low income earners are called wage slaves. If you quit a job, there’s no unemployment, there’s no safety net to fall back on. And if the job you want to quit doesn’t pay you enough to have a cushion of money in the bank, quitting without having another job lined up – which can be difficult if you can’t get time off from the first job for interviews, etc. and is even more difficult in the current economy – is a recipe for disaster. It is very very possible to not be free to leave a job that you don’t like (or where you’re treated very poorly or even illegally by management, like all those WalMart employees who were being locked in to stores on the overnight shift, or weren’t being properly compensated for overtime) unless you want to face a serious financial crisis.
Hmm, why are Indians living in the middle of nowhere on a reservation. I think I learned something about this in history class. What was that reason again? Hmm. Can someone remind me how Indians ended up living in the shittiest, least served areas of the country with the least access to education, health care and work of any minority population in the country? Or how devastating the resulting poverty has been to Indian communities?
My mother was a victim of a war zone and involuntarily displaced. All she had was the “clothes on her back.” She was poor and by extension I also grew up poor.
However, this unfortunate set events (which she did not control just like the Indians did not control their situation on the reservation) does not give a perpetual excuse to just sit there and complain there is no heating.
Did Indians get shafted? Yes.
Blacks? Yes.
Initial waves of Italian, or German, or Jewish, or Asian immigrants? Yes.
Holocaust survivors? Victims of the 2004 Tsunami Flood? Yes and Yes.
Comparing war wounds and reciting “woe is me” past grievances is pointless.
If some Indians want more jobs and wealth, they need to leave the reservation and find work.
From here:
Not enough money, obviously. And it’s “the workers” not “one worker over there” I’m talking about anyway.
The fact that the system is set up so that only people with money can make more money doesn’t mean that the people with no money are inferior vermin, despite what people like you want to believe.
You assume that another job is available. You assume that the employer is interested in negotiating. Life isn’t that ideologically pure.
Besides, in the libertarian system you want the employers would just blacklist any employee who defied them and he’d become unemployable anywhere. You oppose the very things that make seeking another job and negotiations even possible.
Value isn’t the same as replaceability, and neither is the same as fairness.
Nonsense; you want to set up a system where the employees can’t fight back. You want an aristocracy; a world of masters and serfs. You are the one who has said in the past that the weak should perish.
OK, let’s see. I’m delusional or lying for saying that the wealthy employers are generally exploiting and mistreating their workers. You however are perfectly reasonable in saying that the noble hard working business owners are being exploited by the lazy, thieving employees.
The same people as before, who will still have plenty of money.
The very labor of the people you sneer at as lazy thieves.
No, you want the poor to be forced to do all the fishing, hand over the fish to the rich and relegate them to eating pig slop. And probably when the food riots start, shoot them.
I don’t believe for one moment that someone who sneers at the ordinary worker as being lazy thieves wants to help them in any way.
And where greed was kept under control. Otherwise, the masses are still in grinding poverty; it’s just that they are trod on by corporate masters instead of titled ones. Self interest and greed are not the same thing.
Oh God forbid.:rolleyes:
That’s the whole problem with people like you. You don’t want to have to work or pay your dues. You just think you should be handed everything because in your mind no one deserves to have more than you.
Show me where I said anything like that. The fisherman is free to do as he pleases with his fish. He can eat them. Trade them. Whatever. He has the freedom to do as he pleases with the wealth he has created.
You would have him be either a slave or a thief. Either you would set up some mechanism so that allows him to take from successful fishermen or you would have him be dependent on the whim of the successful fisherman for his charity.
You’re right. I have no interest in helping people. I am interested in entering into mutually beneficial exchanges with them.
What are you? A court reporter?
I’ll grant that most of us like to have a little more than we need set aside for a rainy day or to just blow on some toy we could really do without or even put by for a down payment on a new house. But shit, it’s a question of scale. Yeah, we could argue endlessly about what’s excessive. But does anyone actually need more than two houses, 3 luxury cars and $10M? More to be pitied than emulated, imo.
Most businesses are not started by rich people.
I didn’t say they were “inferior vermin.” It was you who declared they contribute the “most” to the companies existence. Well, just sitting there saying “I’m worth the most and contribute the most because blah blah blah” is infinitely easy. Now follow up those bold words with actions that prove that you are truly worth what you say is a little harder isn’t it? Otherwise those bold words about your supposed worth are just hot air.
Well, they all are, aren’t they? Words like “justice” and “equality”, just hot air until we make them real. And what about words like “enough”? Does that figure in? Is there a point reached where, as adhay suggests, ambition becomes greed, sufficiency becomes gross self-indulgence? Are these really positive values that we hope our fellow citizens will emulate? Is that how we teach our kids, if your playmate has the red fire truck, and you want it, all’s fair?
Many of us think not, and are working to change it. Its taking a lot longer than we thought, and we could use your help, if you’ve nothing better to do…
Aside: did you consider the “cud-chewing” aspect of your username when you picked it? I know I never thought about everybody calling me 'luci and doing bad Ricky Retardo impressions…
No fruit comparisons required…the stats still reveal that 80% of Americans (be they adults or children or single parents or in dual earner households with or w/o children) bring in less, mostly substantially less, than 92 grand a yr. Half of them less than 36 grand. And quite often, single parent families (be they headed by mothers or fathers or grandparent…rather sexist assumption there, of the “single mother”:dubious:) involve more than one child, often substantially more. And there are plenty of childless households in both lower and higher income brackets, but who tend to be higher in income due to not having children and the associated expenses and having, perhaps, a disproportionate devotion to career, who are “over-represented” in your theory.
Fact is, a disproportionate number of the poor in this country are children, and many from single-parent families. They are not apples OR oranges, but Americans, in households, who are counted like any other.
While the definition of “middle class” is indeed nebulous, 45 grand is considered by both experts and public perception to be at the bottom end of the minimum income required to achieve a “middle class” standard of living. Not such a great barometer for your argument.
Considering that the upper limit of this definition, according to both public perception and expert opinion, is well above the 92 grand or less that 80% of households bring in, I still maintain that the vast majority of Americans live below what can reasonably be considered “middle class”, esp. given the on-going concentration of wealth and the widening income gap (since the middle is continually being driven down under the imbalance)
To me, 45 grand a yr sounds like a lot, but that is only because I have grown used to living on far less. In reality, esp. a reality in which I could afford all basic needs (decent housing, bills, gas, food, second-hand clothing, a very few treats now and then) PLUS health insurance/care, it is a joke. These days, to approach anything close to what has traditionally been considered middle class (owning a home, substantial savings/retirement, health security, having money left over TO save or invest or spend on recreation/vacations, being able to afford things like new clothing and the general accesories of a middle class lifestyle, etc…) 92-100 grand or more is about what you’d need.
I just want to make sure that I’m understanding what you’re talking about…
Do you mean that there is some standard, agreed upon definition of “enough” and if someone is motivated to earn and live beyond that standard, they are somehow morally deficient? So it’s okay to take from them and redistribute?
First of all, in a practical manner, how do we define what’s “enough”? Popular vote? Some kind of socio-economical calculation? Fact is, no one will ever agree on what is “enough” and that is because it’s a bullshit notion.
In addition, how do we go about redistributing all this extra money? Who gets what and how much? If the cutoff is $100K a year, what does the guy making $99K get? What happens when a business owner has to give his portion above $100K, the retail market shifts and he starts losing money, ending up with only $30K next year?
It is none of your business, if I am acting legally, if I have 14 cars and 17 mansions and a trillion dollars in the bank. Like it or not, this is way the world works. It worked when Ook and Aak were trading rocks for fish, and it works that way now. It is a trait of the human animal, and wanting to succeed and exceed community standards drives the expansion of the human race.
People are not equal, but they are entitled to equal protection. Those who cannot or will not excel do not deserve to suffer or die, and I believe that society has the duty to provide a social safety net. I do not think the safety net should be made of fur lined fabric, however; I believe luxuries should be earned.