The Trump Presidency - how I stopped worrying and learned to love the Hair

[GRtak]

No, you that think only of the short term are in the minority.

 

[Blind_Io]

You are in the minority my friend.

That doesn't make me wrong.

In other news. Trump has a temper tantrum, threatens UN members' aid for condemning his Jerusalem decision.

 

[prizrak]

No, you that think only of the short term are in the minority.

Show me the evidence of that. There is a lot of evidence for my point of view (policy and investment wise)

 

[prizrak]

That doesn't make me wrong.

In other news. Trump has a temper tantrum, threatens UN members' aid for condemning his Jerusalem decision.

Never claimed it did.

EDIT: Tantrum not withstanding I find it funny that a decision to uphold US law would be considered controversial.

 

[Blind_Io]

If US law was made in a vacuum and not awash in special interests, and if it paid any attention to geopolitics, then maybe it wouldn't be controversial.

 

[GRtak]

We have the EPA, that came directly from pushing those in those in control(the minority) into pushing for regulations to protect everyone.

I know that is not what you are looking for, but that is an example.

 

[Blind_Io]

It also doesn't mean it was a wrong move.

When Nixon created the EPA, it was specifically to bolster his sagging ratings for the Vietnam war. The Cuyahoga river catching fire due to pollution was considered a watershed moment, Nixon wanted to continue to fight in Vietnam, but the public was starting to pay more attention to the state of the environment than the war. He assumed that if he appeased them with the EPA, he could buy time in Vietnam. It doesn't mean that creating the EPA was a bad choice, I'm glad we have them, but the founding of the agency was hardly altruistic.

 

[prizrak]

Additionally the EPA was founded decades ago, I am talking recent examples say this century

 

[prizrak]

If US law was made in a vacuum and not awash in special interests, and if it paid any attention to geopolitics, then maybe it wouldn't be controversial.

That just makes it a possibly bad law but supporting it shouldn’t be particularly controversial. In fact I would say that previous presidents ignored it is an actual problem.

 

[GRtak]

The ACA is an example.

 

[Blind_Io]

That just makes it a possibly bad law but supporting it shouldn’t be particularly controversial. In fact I would say that previous presidents ignored it is an actual problem.

Congress may have passed this years ago, but the stay on enforcement was not illegal. Looking at the shit show that has ensued makes me realize that perhaps all those presidents knew what they were doing. I have a hard time believing that the Orange Creamsicle in the White House knows better than all the presidents who stayed the move of the embassy? He gave away his best bargaining chip and got nothing in return.

 

[prizrak]

ACA is pretty terrible in many different ways. I would have preferred expanding medicaid for all as a baseline coverage.

Congress may have passed this years ago, but the stay on enforcement was not illegal. Looking at the shit show that has ensued makes me realize that perhaps all those presidents knew what they were doing. I have a hard time believing that the Orange Creamsicle in the White House knows better than all the presidents who stayed the move of the embassy? He gave away his best bargaining chip and got nothing in return.

Why didn’t they veto the law originally then if it were such a bad idea?

 

[Blind_Io]

The ACA falls short of what I think should have happened. Medicaid for everyone with private supplemental coverage would have made a lot more sense.

From the Wiki on the law:

From 1998 to June 2017, the relocation of the embassy from Tel Aviv was suspended by the sitting President semi-annually, based on national security concerns as provided for in section 7 of the Act.

Sec. 7. Presidential Waiver. (a) Waiver Authority.—
(1) Beginning on October 1, 1998, the President may suspend the limitations set forth in section
3(b) for a period of six months if he determines and reports to Congress in advance that such suspension is necessary to protect the national security interests of the United States.
(2) The President may suspend such limitations for an additional six-month period at the end of any period during which the suspension is in effect under this subsections if the President determines and reports to Congress in advance of the additional suspension that the additional suspension is necessary to protect the national security interests of the United States.
(3) A report under paragraph (1) or (2) shall include— (A) a statement of the interests affected by the limitation that the President seeks to suspend; and (B) a discussion of the manner in which the limitation affects the interests. (b) Applicability of Waiver to Availability of Funds.— If the President exercises the authority set forth in subsection (a) in a fiscal year for the purpose set forth in such section 3(b) except to the extent that the limitation is suspended in such following fiscal year by reason of the exercise of the authority in subsection (a).​

Since this provision went into effect in late 1998, all the presidents serving in office during this period have determined moving forward with the relocation would be detrimental to U.S. national security concerns and opted to issue waivers suspending any action on this front. However, a re-assessment has to take place every six months.

 

[SirEdward]

That's not true at all, many entrepreneurs take their passion and make it into something profitable.

This happens when the risks are lower than than the returns (even just for them), even outside of finance. If it that wasn't so, they wouldn't succeed in the long run. It's simple probability.

Or use an automated coffee machine, also we have a barista at work and it is faster to make coffee yourself.

Ah, but the value is not in the coffee itself, it is in the time tou saved by having it brewed by someone else, time you could dedicate to other activities.

No one, including Lev worships it, however we do recognize it as the best possible system considering all factors.

Why? Can't you think there may be something less problematic? The world was different, why shouldn't it in the future? But if we don't try to come up with something better, we never will.

Fairness is completely subjective, I think it's fair that I make significantly less than my CEO or that I wasn't born into the Rothschild family.

Is it fair that an idiot born in the Rotschild could earn more than you and have more success than you even if you were 10, 20, 50 times better than him, just because he was born with more money? Come on, you live in the land that made a dream of giving everyone the opportunity to succeed!

Porter takes a few minutes to train, or can be completely replaced with a robot of some sort. Architect takes years to train and has to have certain aptitude for it in the first place.

I haven't said that an architect and a porter are the same, nor that they should earn the same, nor that you can't find anyone else to do the job.

I say that even if the porter is the most humble job in the world, the architect would always need a porter, so he can't just treat him like he wasn't there, becaue without a porter, the bridge couldn't be built exactly as if the architect was lacking, despite the difference in skill and impact.

As such, it is hypocritical to treat the porter as if he was a thing, as if the architect could exploit the hell out of the porter just because the porter is in a weaker position, because the wealth of the architect comes directly from the presence of the porter. No porter, no bridge, no wealth.

Yet it is so easy to forget and to become arrogant and spiteful.

That is demonstrably false, all life is competition, it holds true for everything.

Reallly? How can you say this after you yourself offered me the example of how many people and cooperation is necessary to build a smartphone?

Life is not all competition, and while competition cannot be ruled out, if life was only competition, you would pass your time defending against everyone at every moment, and you wouldn't be able to do anything better than surviving.

Instead, we humans have leart how to cooperate, and to differenciate tasks so that people could dedicate themselves to what they do best, knowing that the other of the group will take care of other things. You don't hunt or grow your food, for example.

The idea that all life is competition is something that you have been taught, but it's not true. Life is -also- competition, but what humans excel in is not competition (most other species are far better than us), what humans excel in is cooperation, so they can have time to build things, develop technology, create and craft things.

Those who can only see competition end up draining far more resources than they build, with very few exceptions. How could the species survive if everyone was individualistic to the extreme?

If you have a significant other you likely had others who vied for their attention

And if this was so, you will lose her in the blink of an eye. Yet this is not so, because the significant other is a human being, and if she both of you are not a**holes, you will build something more than a relationship that can crumble at the first glance of a stranger. If that happens, we usually say that things weren't already going that well.

, at work you have to outperform your co-workers to gain raises or promotions, etc...

Wrong! You have to build a team and focus on your work, instead of wasting time and resources trying to outperform people around you and ending up outperformed by people cooperating.

Perfect example is again USSR

The USSR was a place where people were terribly individualistic and were only thinking ofr themselves; this was made possible by a system that didn't reward your merit, only punish your errors. That is perfect for putting everyone in conflict.

How idiot was that? The right way is not punishment for those who don't do what you want, is reward for those who do!

There was a LOT of competition between the military "contractors" (using that term loosely obviously), each had to convince top brass why their design was better.

Case in point.

No it's because it has been tried and failed.

What has been tried? Cancel out soviet communism, it would be stupid to try it again. Soviet communism is not "everything else that can exist outside godlike capitalism", it is not even the millionth part.

One does not logically follow from the other, I can only assume you are talking about taxing the crap out of the rich for social programs. You are not considering though that social programs are inherently inefficient, they also look at a broader picture rather than charities that can zero in on specific issues. Say Gates's foundation fighting malaria and dysentery in the developing world, western governments wouldn't be as effective at it as they would have to deal with domestic issues.

Give a man a fish and you'll feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you'll feed him for a lifetime. Charity will never teach men how to fish, because if it did, that men could beat the giver at his own game.

That's incorrect, venture capitalists expect a return on investment from real goods and services, I am talking about buying up a bunch of stock and just playing the market. Keep in mind the financial system used to work better when stocks were viewed as long term investments and investors allowed companies to do long term planning, it has slowly changed over the past few decades to be a pump and dump almost where short term ROI is prioritized over long term viability.

That's increbily stupid and short-shighted. Give too much valur to competition, you may get this as an outcome, and destroy loing-term value for short-term gain. How stupid is that?

He was very smart, however just like you he thought of humans better than we really are.

They must be, otherwise, they'll die because of their short-sightedness.

Again no one ever said it determines everything, merely that it is the most efficient economic system we have so far came up with.

I agree, now it's time to move on and make things better. Getting attached to it and thinking there can be nothing better will never help.

You are again completely ignoring the massive difference in both skill and responsibility. Anyone can be a sailor, it would take at most a few months to train one, or they can be replaced with a robot.

As with the architect and the porter, the captain can't navigate without the sailor. Besides, for whom and for hat reason should the captain navigate, exactly? To be considered successful by whom? For the robot and by a robot? That's possibly the pointless peak of onanistic individualism.

Maybe this is lost in translation but I am failing to understand the point you are trying to make. Capitalism drives innovation and efficiency, those together create new industries and new markets allowing for more diverse employment for the greater number of people. Scientific progress is very much fueled by the capitalistic drive and much disliked by you competition.

No. Capitalism helped science and technology to progress, that is undoubted; what is important, though, is that our life conditions have not got better compared to 150 years ago because capitalism made them better, but because science and technology did. Capitalism helped research a lot, but you could have got there by other systems. Several ancient civilizations got to peaks in technology by being everything but capitalistic. And it's not a question of their level of technology, because technology builds upon itself; if you start lower, it'll take you more time to get to the same point someone else started from.

You are wrong about structure of society, we have become much more egalitarian and socially mobile than we were even 50 years ago

Good, since there were more mobile and meritocratic societies in the ancient times than in the XIX century.

, not to mention the fact that democratic form of government has become the standard for all developed (and many developing) nations.

What "democracy" do you find in places where people don't vote because they don't feel represented, and where their vote is influenced by massive use of psychology and persuasion techniques?

Granted, it is still better than autocracy, dictatorship or whatever else fu**ed up system you can find, but "democratic" starts to be the wrong adjective to define "today's democracy".

---

I say it again: why do you fear admitting that the system we live in has many flaws? Some of them will destroy it if we don't address them and rather we push them to the extreme. That is madness. Do you really need your inner reality to be defined through this partial view of capitalism? That capitalism doesn't exist anymore, if ever it did, it has been preyed upon by several other dangerous behaviours.

So why keep it as it is? World can change. World will change. Let's find out what doesn't work and make it better, let's keep what works and improve it; any way it goes, it won't stay the same.

 

[LeVeL]

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[prizrak]

This happens when the risks are lower than than the returns (even just for them), even outside of finance. If it that wasn't so, they wouldn't succeed in the long run. It's simple probability.

Utter bull, plenty of people try something and fail, those happened to have succeeded. As some basketball dude once said "you miss 100% of shots you didn't make"

Ah, but the value is not in the coffee itself, it is in the time tou saved by having it brewed by someone else, time you could dedicate to other activities.

Pressing a couple of buttons on a machine, is faster than waiting in line for a barista, telling them your order and waiting for them to make it.

Why? Can't you think there may be something less problematic? The world was different, why shouldn't it in the future? But if we don't try to come up with something better, we never will.

Because so far we have not come up with anything else.

Is it fair that an idiot born in the Rotschild could earn more than you and have more success than you even if you were 10, 20, 50 times better than him, just because he was born with more money? Come on, you live in the land that made a dream of giving everyone the opportunity to succeed!

Is it fair that Valentino Balboni is a Lamborghini test driver just because he happened to live near their test track and helped to move cars around and I will like never have an opportunity to drive one? There is no such thing as fairness, accept and move on.

I haven't said that an architect and a porter are the same, nor that they should earn the same, nor that you can't find anyone else to do the job.
I say that even if the porter is the most humble job in the world, the architect would always need a porter, so he can't just treat him like he wasn't there, becaue without a porter, the bridge couldn't be built exactly as if the architect was lacking, despite the difference in skill and impact.
As such, it is hypocritical to treat the porter as if he was a thing, as if the architect could exploit the hell out of the porter just because the porter is in a weaker position, because the wealth of the architect comes directly from the presence of the porter. No porter, no bridge, no wealth.
Yet it is so easy to forget and to become arrogant and spiteful.

You are again missing the most basic point in all of this, a porter is easily replaced, therefore is not nearly as valuable as an architect.

Reallly? How can you say this after you yourself offered me the example of how many people and cooperation is necessary to build a smartphone?

Because there is competition as part of all that cooperation, every person on those teams is trying to do their best so that they can further their career and be more valuable as a worker, gain promotions or gain better raises or other favors.

Life is not all competition, and while competition cannot be ruled out, if life was only competition, you would pass your time defending against everyone at every moment, and you wouldn't be able to do anything better than surviving.

Yes, you literally do that every day, you compete with other people willing to do your work at minimum.

Instead, we humans have leart how to cooperate, and to differenciate tasks so that people could dedicate themselves to what they do best, knowing that the other of the group will take care of other things. You don't hunt or grow your food, for example.

Yes I don't hunt or grow food, farmers that are competing for my money are doing all of that growing. Stores are competing for my money with coupons, promotions, plentiful parking, longer hours and delivery options.

The idea that all life is competition is something that you have been taught, but it's not true. Life is -also- competition, but what humans excel in is not competition (most other species are far better than us), what humans excel in is cooperation, so they can have time to build things, develop technology, create and craft things.
Those who can only see competition end up draining far more resources than they build, with very few exceptions. How could the species survive if everyone was individualistic to the extreme?

I wasn't taught anything, I see competition everywhere, because that's the basis of all life. You compete for your job, you compete for social standing, you compete for a mate, etc... Just because we don't have to compete for food doesn't mean we don't compete for resources.

And if this was so, you will lose her in the blink of an eye. Yet this is not so, because the significant other is a human being, and if she both of you are not a**holes, you will build something more than a relationship that can crumble at the first glance of a stranger. If that happens, we usually say that things weren't already going that well.

You must be smoking something... Unless a person is completely undesirable there would be potential suitors, you would have to compete for her time with them. Sure your relationship shouldn't be built on something that superficial but in order to get enough time with a person and build a relationship you still need to compete with others.

Wrong! You have to build a team and focus on your work, instead of wasting time and resources trying to outperform people around you and ending up outperformed by people cooperating.

You ARE trying to outperform the other people in your team, doesn't mean you have to actively sabotage anyone but the better your output is the better you look. So you are still competing.

The USSR was a place where people were terribly individualistic and were only thinking ofr themselves; this was made possible by a system that didn't reward your merit, only punish your errors. That is perfect for putting everyone in conflict.

Dafuq? Dude USSR was a place where you were always told that individual doesn't exist, only thing that matters is the collective and by being a bad worker you are letting down your comrades.

Case in point.

Yeah case in point FOR COMPETITION.

What has been tried? Cancel out soviet communism, it would be stupid to try it again. Soviet communism is not "everything else that can exist outside godlike capitalism", it is not even the millionth part.

I have yet to see any non-Marxist suggestions.

Give a man a fish and you'll feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you'll feed him for a lifetime. Charity will never teach men how to fish, because if it did, that men could beat the giver at his own game.

And entitlement programs do? I don't see how a charitable foundation would not be teaching anyone to fish, unless you have some extremely narrow definition of what a charity do.

That's increbily stupid and short-shighted. Give too much valur to competition, you may get this as an outcome, and destroy loing-term value for short-term gain. How stupid is that?

Except again all of life is competition.

They must be, otherwise, they'll die because of their short-sightedness.

Except we have technology that literally changes our entire environment.

I agree, now it's time to move on and make things better. Getting attached to it and thinking there can be nothing better will never help.

Again what are your suggestions aside from some nebulous "fairness" which you can't even objectively define. Also keep in mind capitalism wasn't some sort of an ideology that was forced onto anyone, it organically grew out of democracy.

As with the architect and the porter, the captain can't navigate without the sailor. Besides, for whom and for hat reason should the captain navigate, exactly? To be considered successful by whom? For the robot and by a robot? That's possibly the pointless peak of onanistic individualism.

And again sailors are easily replaceable and captains are not. As far as reason to navigate, I don't know, maybe moving goods or people from one place to another? Kind of the entire reason we came up with ships in the first place....

No. Capitalism helped science and technology to progress, that is undoubted; what is important, though, is that our life conditions have not got better compared to 150 years ago because capitalism made them better, but because science and technology did. Capitalism helped research a lot, but you could have got there by other systems. Several ancient civilizations got to peaks in technology by being everything but capitalistic. And it's not a question of their level of technology, because technology builds upon itself; if you start lower, it'll take you more time to get to the same point someone else started from.

Name some examples? Romans come to mind pretty readily and they were quite capitalistic, they had private business ownership and even pro-athletes.

Good, since there were more mobile and meritocratic societies in the ancient times than in the XIX century.

Example? Just keep in mind you have to leave out every single one that had any form of nobility or slavery as those automatically make them not socially mobile.

What "democracy" do you find in places where people don't vote because they don't feel represented, and where their vote is influenced by massive use of psychology and persuasion techniques?
Granted, it is still better than autocracy, dictatorship or whatever else fu**ed up system you can find, but "democratic" starts to be the wrong adjective to define "today's democracy".

That sounds like the problem of the people not the actual socieconomic system.

I say it again: why do you fear admitting that the system we live in has many flaws? Some of them will destroy it if we don't address them and rather we push them to the extreme. That is madness. Do you really need your inner reality to be defined through this partial view of capitalism? That capitalism doesn't exist anymore, if ever it did, it has been preyed upon by several other dangerous behaviours.
So why keep it as it is? World can change. World will change. Let's find out what doesn't work and make it better, let's keep what works and improve it; any way it goes, it won't stay the same.

I can ask you the same thing, why do you not want to admit that none of the ideas you mentioned have any kind of viability in the real world as they sound exactly like things that have been tried. And again I will say you have not made any suggestions outside of some nebulous idea of "fairness" that doesn't even make any objective sense.

 

[Blind_Io]

Too many posts for me to reply to (both work and life have been very busy lately) but just stopping to mention that the tax cuts passed Congress and are headed to the President's desk

A year of work while holding the House, the Senate, and the White House - and the GOP managed to pass a law - one that is unpopular and is already causing talk of flipping both the houses of congress in the next election. Congratulations, the one thing they managed to do was shoot themselves in the foot.

Who the F do they think they are, telling us where to build our own damn embassy? The anti-Semitic UN can go F itself.

The people sitting back watching the protests erupt all over the middle east as a result while trying to stabilize the entire region while Trump fights fire with gasoline.

 

[LeVeL]

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[SirEdward]

Utter bull, plenty of people try something and fail, those happened to have succeeded. As some basketball dude once said "you miss 100% of shots you didn't make"

And 100% of the shots you make, you make. People are not good in determining their probability of success. What you see as pure passion turned into success is almost always a set of conditions already having a strong chance of success.

Pressing a couple of buttons on a machine, is faster than waiting in line for a barista, telling them your order and waiting for them to make it.

The waiting and ordering time doesn't count, as you can well wait in line for a machine or to order from a machine. The time to make it count very little, as you have your time free to do something else. And THAT is the value you get. Free time to do something that earns you more.

Because so far we have not come up with anything else.

And we never will if we think that what we have now is alrady "the best" and don't need to be improved.

Is it fair that Valentino Balboni is a Lamborghini test driver just because he happened to live near their test track and helped to move cars around and I will like never have an opportunity to drive one? There is no such thing as fairness, accept and move on.

Fairness is not born out of nature, fairness is human-related, it's not starting equality, it's giving equal opportunities, which is still not that anyone can do everything, but that you give the possibility of trying and reward merit failry.

It has nothing to do with nature.

You are again missing the most basic point in all of this, a porter is easily replaced, therefore is not nearly as valuable as an architect.

Sorry, but you have not understood what I have said. The fact that the porter is replaceable doesn't matter in how much his work is worth. Without a porter, any porter, the architect couldn't build the bridge. The value of the porter's work is quite high. If both were doing the same amount of work, at the same skill level in their own fields, with the same effort both in their respective fields, they should earn the same.

However, since porters are commonly found, the architect has a stronger position and can take a bigger share. This would be true if there were five architects and only one porter. The porter would get the bigger part of the share.

If there are too many porters and too few architects, and if the porters would NEED the job, you could push them into slavery, into working for almost nothihg. If there were one hundred startving architects and just one porter, you could enslave the architects.

The difficulty of the task modify the amount of people able to do it, and this is indeed one of the drives of the share they take; but to complete the task each role is only as important as it is necessary.

So, there is no way of determining the fact that an architect should be paid more than a porter just on the base of the fact that he is an architect. Either he his work requires more time than the other, or he has more skill than the other (in their respective fields).

The rest is just a question of rarity and opportunity costs.

This means that people might very well work for something and get paid far, far less than they should be if the job was treated failry, to the point where their motivation will slow down and their work will become sloppy or slow. At which point the bridge will cost a lot more, or will be built (or designed) badly, or it won't be built at all.

And the stronger part will blame the weaker part for not being good workers. Because people have a tenency to consider themselves always hard workers and to consider the other always slackers, never asking -WHY- some things happen. No, it's always the other part's fault for being useless (so they can also explain why they earn more in a way that boosts the ego).

Because there is competition as part of all that cooperation, every person on those teams is trying to do their best so that they can further their career and be more valuable as a worker, gain promotions or gain better raises or other favors.

Again, this is wrong. When you work in a team, you will certainly see some form of competition, but what ultimately builds the value of the job you all are doing is not that you are trying to do best than someone else, it is the fact that you are cooperating to build something, and you succeed in building it.

Yes, you literally do that every day, you compete with other people willing to do your work at minimum.

This is NEED, and it has a profound impact on motivation, thus productivity, thus value.

Yes I don't hunt or grow food, farmers that are competing for my money are doing all of that growing. Stores are competing for my money with coupons, promotions, plentiful parking, longer hours and delivery options.

Not at all. They are doing what they do best so they don't have to do also what YOU do best, so you can do it for them and you can both have both things done in the better possible way, in the least amount of time, at the lower total cost.

Of course each one of you is trying to get a bigger share of the whole cake, but you are cooperating far more than you are competing. If that was just competition, one of you will bash the other over the head until he gets what he wants for free, and the other will run away as soon as possible. The result of this short-sightedness? Both of you will end up with lwss of just one of the two things, and very few of the other. That's stupid.

You must be smoking something... Unless a person is completely undesirable there would be potential suitors, you would have to compete for her time with them. Sure your relationship shouldn't be built on something that superficial but in order to get enough time with a person and build a relationship you still need to compete with others.

If you were just competing, why would you compete in the long term at all? Yet we all do.

Dafuq? Dude USSR was a place where you were always told that individual doesn't exist, only thing that matters is the collective and by being a bad worker you are letting down your comrades.

It doesn't matter what you've been told, what matters is what -IS-. The USSR didn't reward merit; in doing so, it disrupted people's will to work hard. As in slavery, they were not trying to do their best and get an advantage (competition indeed exists), they tried to get the same by doing as less as possible. By refusing to reward merit, the USSR was destroying cooperation (to build something better for all) and boosting competition (to work less than other people).

That was very, very stupid. But this happens in our western societies too. If you do not reward merit, people will stop working. After which, are they slackers, or is the one who doesn't reward them an idiot?

Yeah case in point FOR COMPETITION.

Because compared to other fields, the military in the USSR rewarded merit (they wanted the best and rewarded the best). And guess what, they were among the best in the world. It seems I have a point.

I have yet to see any non-Marxist suggestions.

Reward merit, reward hard work, reward skill, reward determination over return of capitals, kill off high returns on money and resources alone, stop people from getting rich by doing nothing or by stealing resources to other people. This answers also your question about something more practical than "fairness".

If that's Marxist, maybe Marx wasn't so bad as you paint it.

Name some examples? Romans come to mind pretty readily and they were quite capitalistic

Romans were militaristic, expansionistic, adopted slavery and started falling when they stopped capturing gold, land and smart minds from other people.

Capitalism was simply not there, or wasn't a primary force of their economy.

BTW, have you noticed that the western civilizations have started to decline after they gave up on colonialism and expansionism? Capitalism has probably less to do with their extreme wealth in the last two centuries than you might think.

Example? Just keep in mind you have to leave out every single one that had any form of nobility or slavery as those automatically make them not socially mobile.

Wrong. Rome was very mobile, on a social level, far more than the democratic UK today. People (albeit few of them) could start as slaves and become free man and even important in their field (particularly the army). Rome, there, rewarded merit. But, besides that, the mongols of Gengis Khan are a completely different, but good example. Gengis rewarded merit, regardless of origin. And the mongols kept the able people in charge wherever they conquered, because it was smart. They rewarded merit. You see where they got. So did the arabs in the 7th century. That went very well, at the time. Adn they were a beacon of science in the 12th century.

I can ask you the same thing, why do you not want to admit that none of the ideas you mentioned have any kind of viability in the real world as they sound exactly like things that have been tried.

Because they have. You think they are communist because you can't think of anything else outside your own system, because you cannot bring yourself to admit its faults, because you have been taught that anything different from the US way is "communism".

Yet I say, reward merit, reward dedication, reward time spent doing, working, thinking solutions, increase the motivation of people, their unity, throw away the ultra-individualistic extreme, have people build something together and reap the fruit of it together. That is the way.

 

[prizrak]

Too much work to answer point by point so you get a lumpsum.
- You are fundamentally misunderstanding how value of a job is measured, it is not only one's skill it is also demand for that skill and difficulty in acquiring said skill. A porter's job takes at most hours to learn and maybe a week to master (as in figure out how to do everything efficiently) so in your hypothetical of many architects and one porter, the architects can easily learn to be porters, the reverse is not true.
- Socioeconomic systems arise organically out of need, so far we have not had the need to replace capitalism, we have controls to stop it from running amok but so far a need has not been there.
- You are right that fairness only matters when it comes to opportunities, that is to say there are no legal factors preventing you from trying your best, which is already the case so what needs to be changed?
- Again you misunderstand how competition works, competition doesn't mean "kill the other guy" competition means "be better than the other guy". Working in a team you are competing by trying to be the absolute best worker you can, doesn't mean you don't help your colleagues or that you badmouth them to management. But at the end of the day there may be only one promotion slot and there is only a limited pool for bonuses and raised so the better workers have a better shot at getting more.

Now on to specifics:

Reward merit, reward hard work, reward skill, reward determination over return of capitals, kill off high returns on money and resources alone, stop people from getting rich by doing nothing or by stealing resources to other people. This answers also your question about something more practical than "fairness".

Hard work, merit, determination and skill are irrelevant if they are not in demand. The only people getting rich by stealing resources are criminals and government (fun correlation is it not?). Making money from money is not a sustainable long term strategy, you like to talk about the long term a lot, well in the long term if the Rothschild family doesn't manage it's money well and make the right investments, and as you rightfully pointed out, those investments are needed to provide start up or operating capital to new companies (like say Tesla) they will run out of money eventually.
But let's even forget all that, what do you consider high returns? How do you practically stop those returns without turning markets upside down? How do companies raise needed capital if they cannot promise high ROI? What do you do about all the venture capital that works exclusively on ROI?

Romans were militaristic, expansionistic, adopted slavery and started falling when they stopped capturing gold, land and smart minds from other people.

And also capitlastic:

the Roman Republic was a capitalist economy without a definition

Source: http://www.mikeanderson.biz/2009/02/...-republic.html
And yes Rome was socially mobile, specifically because it had a proto-capitalist economy, there was a middle class and private businesses all over the place. The main difference between what we would call modern capitalism and the roman version would be the fact that they didn't have a very strong business class that was involved in politics.

The Mongols and the Arabs both had nobility and therefore automatically are disqualified. You can become the next Gates (as little of a chance as there is of that), you cannot become the next Duke of whatever or the King of something or other (well outside of an armed coup but if we add ability to use force to get what you want then social order breaks down anyway).

BTW, have you noticed that the western civilizations have started to decline after they gave up on colonialism and expansionism? Capitalism has probably less to do with their extreme wealth in the last two centuries than you might think.

How has it started to decline? US emerged as a superpower despite not being much of a colonizer. However that is irrelevant, global poverty outside of the western world is the lowest it has ever been, global trade allowed Europe and Japan to dig themselves out of the hole they were bombed into during WW2. China has a huge emerging middle class and is becoming one of the most important global markets since they went capitalist.

Because they have. You think they are communist because you can't think of anything else outside your own system, because you cannot bring yourself to admit its faults, because you have been taught that anything different from the US way is "communism".

I was 14 when I moved to the US, I am willing to bet that I have a more in-depth knowledge of communism and socialism along with the historical events leading up to the Bolshevik revolution than you do. (The curriculum wasn't really updated when I left, so history of communist party was a big subject).

You keep saying that I cannot admit the faults of capitalism, yet I have never claimed it has no faults. This is why we have things like government regulation, anti-trust laws, etc... I have stated multiple times that I don't support a laissez-faire system as I don't believe it would lead anywhere good.

I again posit to you, that you don't want to admit that your ideas of "fairness" are classically Marxist because you know that it doesn't work.

Yet I say, reward merit, reward dedication, reward time spent doing, working, thinking solutions, increase the motivation of people,

Again, that's capitalism, catch is of course that your skills must be marketable, but that would be the case under any system that has a remote chance of working.

their unity, throw away the ultra-individualistic extreme, have people build something together and reap the fruit of it together. That is the way.

Aaaand we are back to Marxist and socialist ideas. Yet again I tell you that individualism is natural, we have to harness that individualism to make society work, this is something that capitalism is quite good at, reward individual success and when each and every individual is successful the group is as well.

Also we have an example of a socialistic (as opposed to individualistic) society in Japan, huge suicide rates, extreme levels of stress due to overwork and negative population growth.

Only putting the link in there because the stupid vBulletin does not allow me to completely remove the URL and complains about needing one.