Dow Jones at 9985Follow

See above. Or below.



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Ash is discussing a post-scarcity society, and economic modeling for that situation gets quite a bit cleaner as commodity differentials become insignificant. Things get reduced to valuations in time, energy, mass and information. This system, contrary to popular belief, does not necessitate the collapse of capitalism as a construct, but like all economic structures it undergo a significant amount of restructuring to fit the current social models.

I could go into more detail, but it would probably be best to move that discussion into a different thread, unless that would be a more exciting direction than playing retarded theory whack-a-mole. Because that's pretty fun.

What's your goal in life, varrus?

Equitable, eh? Earlier you said there's room for infinite growth in the capitalist system. So which is it? A system can't be both infinite and balanced. Either it's finite and balanced, or it's infinite and unbalanced.

Here's what I mean: in an infinite system, there's no real growth, because of inflation. The more stuff each individual is capable of accumulating, the less anything is worth. If everyone were rich (which is impossible in the capitalist system), everything would in fact go up in price, but it's relative value would stay the same. This is called inflation, and we see it every day. This is what makes your earlier "the pie is infinite" comment asinine.

In a "balanced" system, there can be no equity. Two separate people can put in 8 hours worth of work and be paid a very different salary. The difference in salary need not be based on anything: you can even have two different people doing identical jobs at two different companies and being paid very different salaries. This is in fact the basis of capitalism: an inequality in value provides a clear winner in terms of value. But there's always a loser, its inescapable. There would be no such thing as a sale, no such thing as competition, if capitalism was "equitable."

Your current argument is that anyone willing to put in the work can get their equal share of the pie: my point is that each person's respective share of the pie has little to do with how much effort they put in to get their share, and a lot to do with how much pie they already have.

Edited, Oct 16th 2009 12:07am by AshOnMyTomatoes

This is extraordinarily simplistic.. and biased.

Personally, I'd steal the drug and sell it to the dying guy at a premium.

Then burn down a couple of orphanages for good measure.

Bolded the important part.

One example of the opposite doesn't make it any less true.

Nuance is the dread enemy of small minds.

Yeah, but nuance makes for terrible soundbytes.

Much less smoldering wreckage, though. That's a bonus.

I'm probably the only one that imagined Samira holding a gom jabbar to Varrus' neck while telling him this.

That's the best thing I've heard lately.