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Slavery never ended people

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ruveyn
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21 Nov 2012, 8:31 pm

RushKing wrote:
Capitalism forces people to work for a boss to survive. I can't even run around and pick berrys because all the land around me has been privatized.


What about people who start their own businesses or make their living as freelance writers, consultants, repair persons, etc. There were not forced to work for a boss but they still had to labor to get their bread.

ruveyn



RushKing
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21 Nov 2012, 8:37 pm

ruveyn wrote:
RushKing wrote:
Capitalism forces people to work for a boss to survive. I can't even run around and pick berrys because all the land around me has been privatized.


What about people who start their own businesses or make their living as freelance writers, consultants, repair persons, etc. There were not forced to work for a boss but they still had to labor to get their bread.

ruveyn

You mean people born into families with purchasing power?



blackelk
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22 Nov 2012, 2:04 am

Awesomelyglorious wrote:
blackelk wrote:
The problem is that economics is a pseudoscience that is treated like a real science. It is closer to an ideology.

Right, because I'm sure you've spent a lot of time researching it.

Economics is a social science. It's not an ideology, and economists of different ideologies frequently can have meaningful discussions and use similar frameworks for solving some of the same problems.

The Taleb quote is pretty useless for your point, as you're somehow operating on the assumption that most of economics is really macroeconomic predictions, when it really isn't. Because it isn't, referring to failed economic predictions does nothing to discredit the field, especially given that macroeconomics used for predictions is pretty different than the rest of the body of knowledge. So, the meat and bones of economics is really microeconomics, and microeconomics actually has a lot of very good predictive theories.

Also, your comment on Marxism is pretty deeply questionable because of how Marxism has failed in the theory of value, but also generally failed to provide a strong research program. People are Marxists out of ideology, but people are capitalists out of pragmatism given their background knowledge. I mean, we can go into a huge dissection on how all of this stuff works and interrelates, but really, you're just using bare assertions and pretending that economics is a pomo fest rather than a discipline that's actually growing and trying to do what it can.


Can you prove anything you just said scientifically, or are you just telling just so stories that fit your agenda? This is a philosophical argument, nothing more.

What has economics actually given us? How has the field made our lives better?

And the greatest scientific accomplishments and institutions are run and organized by the state.


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22 Nov 2012, 5:50 am

I don't have the energy to read 5 pages, but science is not monolith. It is a word for many different schools of thought of what science is and is not.
The same goes for ethics, but if we are to use science then here is a part of it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/magaz ... wanted=all

In short all ethical systems try to deal with harm, group, authority, fairness and purity. Now my claim is that science can be used to describe that it is so, but that science itself is not an ethical system, but rather a tool. How this tool is understood and used/misused can't be settled by science itself, because that is outside what science is (to me).



ruveyn
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22 Nov 2012, 12:08 pm

blackelk wrote:
What has economics actually given us? How has the field made our lives better?

And the greatest scientific accomplishments and institutions are run and organized by the state.


Thomas Edison electrified lower Manhattan (from Houston St. to the Battery) our of his own pocket.

The Freres Wright invented the first -controllable- heavier than air flying machine out of their own pocket. $1200 1903 dollars. Samuel Langley, Phd, got a $50,000 grant from Congress (40 times what the Wrights spent) and produced three ludicrous failures. The electronic computer was invented by Atsenoff in 1938 using private funds. Robert Goddard invented the first successful liquid propelled rocket out of his own pocket. Both Marconi and Tesla invented wireless telegraphy and radio out of their own pocket. The first working internal combustion autos were developed by their inventors using private funds. George Westinghouse invented and manufactured the first successful positive pressure air brakes in 1859 out of his own pocket. The Panama Canal was built using mostly private funds.

You ought to study some history, son.

ruveyn



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22 Nov 2012, 12:42 pm

There are plenty of highly intelligent critics of the mainstream neoclassical school and it's association with global policy setters like the IMF and World Bank. You have will known insiders like Joseph Steiglits. Then you have less well known outsiders, the "real world economics" people, who do not rigidly subscribe to any particular heterodox school. I find it annoying when elitist proponents of neoclassical economics lump all critics in with Marxists. It's also perfectly fair to agree with the sociological and ethical concerns brought up by Marx without subscribing to all the obscure jargon and admittedly flawed theoretical models Marx came up with. The criticisms of neoclassical economics do not come solely from the left either. There is actually quite a bit of overlap between Austrian, Post-Keynesian, and even Marxian arguments on the role credit and debt have in the economy.



Last edited by marshall on 22 Nov 2012, 1:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

ruveyn
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22 Nov 2012, 12:48 pm

RushKing wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
RushKing wrote:
Capitalism forces people to work for a boss to survive. I can't even run around and pick berrys because all the land around me has been privatized.


What about people who start their own businesses or make their living as freelance writers, consultants, repair persons, etc. There were not forced to work for a boss but they still had to labor to get their bread.

ruveyn

You mean people born into families with purchasing power?


I know several "poor boys" who made it on their own efforts.

Andrew Carnegie who became a genuine billionaire come from Scotland with only the clothes on his back and a few coins in in pocket. Ben Franklin was a juvinile delingujant who made it good in Philadelphia with no help from his parents who had given up on him.

You are really committed to your sociologically and economically bigoted world view, aren't you.

ruveyn



marshall
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22 Nov 2012, 1:04 pm

ruveyn wrote:
RushKing wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
RushKing wrote:
Capitalism forces people to work for a boss to survive. I can't even run around and pick berrys because all the land around me has been privatized.


What about people who start their own businesses or make their living as freelance writers, consultants, repair persons, etc. There were not forced to work for a boss but they still had to labor to get their bread.

ruveyn

You mean people born into families with purchasing power?


I know several "poor boys" who made it on their own efforts.

Andrew Carnegie who became a genuine billionaire come from Scotland with only the clothes on his back and a few coins in in pocket. Ben Franklin was a juvinile delingujant who made it good in Philadelphia with no help from his parents who had given up on him.

You are really committed to your sociologically and economically bigoted world view, aren't you.

ruveyn


Is there even a name for this "the rare exception discounts the common rule" type of fallacy. :roll:



marshall
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22 Nov 2012, 1:16 pm

I guess this thread just serves to prove that intelligent debate is impossible. All I see are both sides banging their heads against the wall over irreconcilable ethical disagreements. There is a quote, I don't remember from where, that human beings are rationalizing rather than rational. The root of all arguments don't boil down to logic but to a fight over which monkeys deserve the best position at the watering hole. We might as well not even have debates. Might as well settle our differences with clubs and fists. Historically that's what it seems to always come down to whenever s**t really hits the fan. :roll:



Jacoby
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22 Nov 2012, 1:55 pm

marshall wrote:
I guess this thread just serves to prove that intelligent debate is impossible. All I see are both sides banging their heads against the wall over irreconcilable ethical disagreements. There is a quote, I don't remember from where, that human beings are rationalizing rather than rational. The root of all arguments don't boil down to logic but to a fight over which monkeys deserve the best position at the watering hole. We might as well not even have debates. Might as well settle our differences with clubs and fists. Historically that's what it seems to always come down to whenever sh** really hits the fan. :roll:


To have an intelligent debate the 'other side' needs the intellectual honesty and capacity to debate the subject on hand. Otherwise there isn't much left to do besides point and call them stupid.



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22 Nov 2012, 3:29 pm

blackelk wrote:
Awesomelyglorious wrote:
blackelk wrote:
The problem is that economics is a pseudoscience that is treated like a real science. It is closer to an ideology.

Right, because I'm sure you've spent a lot of time researching it.

Economics is a social science. It's not an ideology, and economists of different ideologies frequently can have meaningful discussions and use similar frameworks for solving some of the same problems.

The Taleb quote is pretty useless for your point, as you're somehow operating on the assumption that most of economics is really macroeconomic predictions, when it really isn't. Because it isn't, referring to failed economic predictions does nothing to discredit the field, especially given that macroeconomics used for predictions is pretty different than the rest of the body of knowledge. So, the meat and bones of economics is really microeconomics, and microeconomics actually has a lot of very good predictive theories.

Also, your comment on Marxism is pretty deeply questionable because of how Marxism has failed in the theory of value, but also generally failed to provide a strong research program. People are Marxists out of ideology, but people are capitalists out of pragmatism given their background knowledge. I mean, we can go into a huge dissection on how all of this stuff works and interrelates, but really, you're just using bare assertions and pretending that economics is a pomo fest rather than a discipline that's actually growing and trying to do what it can.


Can you prove anything you just said scientifically, or are you just telling just so stories that fit your agenda? This is a philosophical argument, nothing more.


Any economic paper which has an empirically testable prediction and actually tests it would demonstrate the scientific content of economics. A simple Google search would probably yield thousands of examples.

blackelk wrote:
What has economics actually given us? How has the field made our lives better?


Wealth.

Someone has to pay the 100-180 million dollar bills for those proton beam treatment facilities saving the lives of cancer patients.

Oh, and GDP rank and HDI rank is highly correlated across countries. Last time I checked, the OLS correlation was > 0.9.



Seabass
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22 Nov 2012, 4:57 pm

marshall wrote:
I guess this thread just serves to prove that intelligent debate is impossible. All I see are both sides banging their heads against the wall over irreconcilable ethical disagreements. There is a quote, I don't remember from where, that human beings are rationalizing rather than rational. The root of all arguments don't boil down to logic but to a fight over which monkeys deserve the best position at the watering hole. We might as well not even have debates. Might as well settle our differences with clubs and fists. Historically that's what it seems to always come down to whenever sh** really hits the fan. :roll:


By posting this you're just becoming another member in the clash of the monkeys. There's nothing wrong with a little passion. It's when the ad hominem's and undue condescension come out that the true monkeys wiggle out of the woodwork.



blackelk
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22 Nov 2012, 5:50 pm

marshall wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
RushKing wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
RushKing wrote:
Capitalism forces people to work for a boss to survive. I can't even run around and pick berrys because all the land around me has been privatized.


What about people who start their own businesses or make their living as freelance writers, consultants, repair persons, etc. There were not forced to work for a boss but they still had to labor to get their bread.

ruveyn

You mean people born into families with purchasing power?


I know several "poor boys" who made it on their own efforts.

Andrew Carnegie who became a genuine billionaire come from Scotland with only the clothes on his back and a few coins in in pocket. Ben Franklin was a juvinile delingujant who made it good in Philadelphia with no help from his parents who had given up on him.

You are really committed to your sociologically and economically bigoted world view, aren't you.

ruveyn


Is there even a name for this "the rare exception discounts the common rule" type of fallacy. :roll:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_picking_(fallacy)


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22 Nov 2012, 6:01 pm

blackelk wrote:
marshall wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
RushKing wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
RushKing wrote:
Capitalism forces people to work for a boss to survive. I can't even run around and pick berrys because all the land around me has been privatized.


What about people who start their own businesses or make their living as freelance writers, consultants, repair persons, etc. There were not forced to work for a boss but they still had to labor to get their bread.

ruveyn

You mean people born into families with purchasing power?


I know several "poor boys" who made it on their own efforts.

Andrew Carnegie who became a genuine billionaire come from Scotland with only the clothes on his back and a few coins in in pocket. Ben Franklin was a juvinile delingujant who made it good in Philadelphia with no help from his parents who had given up on him.

You are really committed to your sociologically and economically bigoted world view, aren't you.

ruveyn


Is there even a name for this "the rare exception discounts the common rule" type of fallacy. :roll:


Yeah, it's called "the only absolute is that there are no absolutes". That's why top-down systems of government don't usually work, with plenty of evidence to back that up.



marshall
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22 Nov 2012, 7:29 pm

Jacoby wrote:
marshall wrote:
I guess this thread just serves to prove that intelligent debate is impossible. All I see are both sides banging their heads against the wall over irreconcilable ethical disagreements. There is a quote, I don't remember from where, that human beings are rationalizing rather than rational. The root of all arguments don't boil down to logic but to a fight over which monkeys deserve the best position at the watering hole. We might as well not even have debates. Might as well settle our differences with clubs and fists. Historically that's what it seems to always come down to whenever sh** really hits the fan. :roll:


To have an intelligent debate the 'other side' needs the intellectual honesty and capacity to debate the subject on hand. Otherwise there isn't much left to do besides point and call them stupid.

People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Market dogmatism is as boneheaded and in denial of reality as any kind of leftist dogmatism.



marshall
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22 Nov 2012, 7:34 pm

...



Last edited by marshall on 24 Nov 2012, 12:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.