ttonkytonk

It would help if voucher programs were more flexible.

E.g. if a $1000 voucher is available for an apartment, why not a $500 one for a relative's room?

I hope Mr. Tetraheder remembers to make any accounts permanent regardless of the wishes of the members - nothing like a permanent asset.

I think they're assuming the representative democracies actually exist.

In the U.S. (from what I've seen - I'm envious of those with commanding knowledge of the situation) there are occasional elections with very limited, pre-chosen slates of candidates that most people don't know personally. The last time I tried to contact my district city councilperson (albeit in a fairly large city), a secretary answered my email.

There's also the assumption (not to deny the stated correlation) that satisfaction is tied to economic welfare. My opinion is that while this is necessary, it's hardly sufficient, and a major issue is not only economic inequality but a general inequality in opportunities to have any sort of influence in societal operations. I think it would be better if more people could be big fishes in little ponds. The professional class that makes up the media is defacto big fish and has a bias and blind spots to this.

Furthermore, I believe a better description of what exists in the U.S. at least is that we have a representative oligarchy - elected officials primarily representing and serving rich business interests.

Please understand that this is not really a moral judgement on my part - it seems entirely predictable and probably unavoidable for this to happen in an age of breathtaking material and technological abundance coupled with confusion about larger social questions.

I don't feel like this is a fair representation of my viewpoint, it certainly makes me a little angry. I'm afraid I'll have to discontinue this discussion.

But how about the coercion of our own bodies? Is our will free if we're (for example) free to consume all we want, even if that consumption makes us feel worse in the long run and we know it?

And in this case, is the issue weakness of will, or is the will determined to do what seems best based on its available knowledge?

Our will is not free, it belongs to us!

I believe the real evil is in the conceit of knowledge, and that the gross inequalities of material wealth are actually only symptoms of this.

Roughly 2,500 years ago two giants of ethical philosophy appeared on the scene in the form of Socrates (who can be learned about best through Plato's dialogues and Xenophon's underappreciated Socratic works) and Siddartha Guatama (I would recommend Thich Nhat Hanh's Old Path White Clouds as a reasonably unified source of his life and thought).

I know bringing those guys up probably seems sentimental, but I have lived experience with poverty, and political "realism" is only beneficial to those who have not as yet suffered the consequences of harmful patterns of behavior.

I think Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol illustrates a pretty good path for the exceedingly wealthy to become heroes, but there's this problem of sentiment, isn't there? And yet sentiment is constantly appealed to in all forms of commercial advertising!

People don't even know why or how they are here. Siddartha and Socrates' responses were basically that the answers are difficult to articulate or fathom, but the real pressing issue is how best to live life, and their answers were basically to moderate and do no harm or wrong, at least as much as possible, because the real goods are non-material, and to do wrong actually harms the perpetrator more than the victim.

We need to bravely search for the truth in all matters.

The Satyricon

I've recently read 19th century theologian and scholar Benjamin Jowett's introduction to Plato's Laws, where (I believe) he observes that humankind is merely in the "dawn of politics". He also points out that the state Plato conceives in Laws is in Plato's estimation the "second best" (which limits the richest to having four times as much wealth), with the one described in Republic being his ideal, which Jowett describes as "communistic" (while Jowett was a contemporary of Marx, I am unaware of any mutual regards).

It's not necessary to be a materialist Marxist to embrace Hickel's "mission statement" that “Degrowth is about reducing the material and energy throughput of the economy to bring it back into balance with the living world, while distributing income and resources more fairly, liberating people from needless work, and investing in the public goods that people need to thrive.”

(edited)

The cravings are most involuntary however, I assure you.

There's plenty of"public poisoning" going around - sure you haven't profited from some of it yourself?

When will the sanctimonious get off of their high-horse?

No.

(edit - but let me amend my original statement and then I'm leaving it at that: "I may add that I would guess the product probably wouldn't be so harmful if people kept their consumption to under five cigarettes a day.")

I really don't, but this is my belief as someone who has extensive experience with cigarette culture and has thought about it. You are free to disregard my opinion based on this fact, but I will still contend that if someone only smoked 1-4 cigarettes a day, then there's a reasonable likelihood (though less than 100%) that they wouldn't have any serious resultant health issues.

(edit - and it's my belief that emphysema/COPD is the most serious risk of chronic smoking, where basically the lungs just wear out.)

So they're exceptional in producing unhealthy, but profitable products?

Yes, because they're primed for it. People make the bad choices they're constantly encouraged to make.

I agree mostly with your last paragraph. I'm surely not trying to encourage a habit I'm grateful to have been able to give up, but I believe 1-4 would significantly reduce the risk of emphysema - sorry, but I don't have much patience for "abstinence-nazis".

A larger pattern of assuming the virtue of the product according to its profit value.

Have not read the article, but I think "Big Tobacco" is something of a scapegoat for a larger pattern, and basically they were just unlucky enough to produce one of the most harmful products (recognized as such once the health bills started coming due).

(edit - I may add the product probably wouldn't be so harmful if people kept their consumption to under five cigarettes a day.)

It's telling that "white men" has become a byword, but to speak this way in intellectual terms is to subvert the very tradition that has struggled against what made it that way. (Note - I have not read the article.)

I keep trying to tell people, "What a friend we have in Socrates!" but they won't seem to listen. Maybe it would help if I said I could easily see myself being Meletus or Philebus.

It seems patently impossible. I wonder if this stems from a confusion about the nature of consciouness implied in Descartes' cognito, which equates self with thinking, which includes calculating (computing).

Looks like a bunch of videos.

Paywalled.

Maybe there's some way for AI to become conscious, but the burden of proof would seem to be on those who make the claim. Seeming is in no way being. Consciousness is most definitely something associated with organic life. I don't see how a computer could be conscious anymore than how a corporation could be - short of the consciousness of its parts: for a corporation, the people who comprise it, for a computer, perhaps something on an atomic level?

They weren't that fragile, but did tend to wear out after maybe a couple of months of heavy use.

I was basically just responding to your flippant suggestion that someone just "go somewhere else" if they don't like it where they're at.

A place to live is not only a positive but a natural right.

There is nowhere to go for Americans who have become completely disenfranchised.

I read recently that many political philosophers think the U.S. has become a (de facto) oligarchy.

In Republic book eight 552 it's argued that oligarchies "admit the greatest of all evils... Allowing someone to sell all his possessions and someone else to buy them...". Now this is particularly true in regards to land (which even when "owned" is essentially rented from the government in the form of property taxes). I don't know the history but I've seen hints that much of this land acquisition was pretty coercive.

I think it's difficult for many Americans to admit this because their thinking is biased in the same way that someone becomes biased about a person they love - no matter what anybody tells them, "loving eyes never see". Only the love here is the love of "the good life" - the materially rich one.

Indeed the article points out "The Marxist philosopher G A Cohen might well have been right when he declared in Why Not Socialism? (2009) that ‘[e]very market, even a socialist market, is a system of predation.’"

I've lately had a private joke that the lovers of capitalism are the true "marksists" in that everyone is a potential "mark".