Artful Dodger:

> And whenever we speak of capitalism, I speak of it as it relates to the US. I don't
> care about the rest of the world. It's good for the US and that's the context of this
> discussion. If you want to drag in developing countries, talk to someone else about
> that. I have no interest in that discussion.

Not to drag developing countries into the discussion? It is only about the USA? How many American companies operate in developing countries? How much profit do they make there? If developing coutnries have NOTHING to do with capitalism, then why is the USA doing business there?

What is your behaviour then if not selfish hogwash? "Who cares about the rest of the world?" It is so easy to say capitalism is great if all that you look at are the rich and the comfortable middle class. Yes, capitalism brought prosperity to CEOs, but what about their employees in the developing world? Don't they count in your mind or are you so selfish that all you care about is your own little world?

> Who says it's wrong to exploit the weak? Tough crap on them. Why are humans
> subject to such a rule but the animal kingdom lives by exploiting the weakness of
> others.

Are you a social Darwinist then? Because that is what social Darwinism is. If you believe that the strongest humans should rule, you are a social Darwinist and that is the what drove the Nazi mentality.

> On what basis is any of this true? Who is to say what is right or what is wrong?
> You? How can you hold me to that standard apart from threat of violence? Is it
> objectively wrong or is that just an opinion that most have agreed to? And if in time,
> society decides it's OK to kill babies for fun, then is that act still wrong in your view?
> How so? Based on what?

Like a said in my previous post, many statements about what is right and wrong are made "a priori", meaning without no basis other than the statement itself. The decision to accept an act as right or wrong is a personal decision. What society says and what an individual does are two different things. If I say it is wrong to kill and exploit others, it is my personal choice and something I believe not based on some socially agreed standard.

If you say that the threat of violence is the only thing that stops people from being bad, then give me a reason why it is wrong for Al Qaeda to attack the USA, just because the USA will bomb them and kill them? Why should Iran give up its nuclear program, because the USA will bomb the country? And what is another country threatens to bomb the USA if it bombs Iran? Is the escalation of violence acceptable just because violence is the ONLY way to decide what is right and wrong?

> This is exactly the argument I am making. If there is an actual wrong here, who
> decides? Why couldn't the Nazis decide that for their culture, killing Jews is just fine?

Well, then why is ANYTHING wrong? I make this "a priori" statement: it is wrong to kill someone because of their race. You can choose to believe it or not. It is your INDIVIDUAL choice, and you are responsible for that choice. Whether your choice has consequences for you or not is a different problem. If a Nazi killed, escaped and never faced justice, that does not make his choice right. Since people do wrong things and more often than not they don't face justice, we have invented a "spiritual" deterrent. We say that "God" will punish the wicked. However, in Atheism there is no such luxury, and the choice of right and wrong becomes an individual process. Punishment for Atheists might be inadequate when the evil escape, but then those who believe in God have nothing but faith to go on. Without faith there is no God, and without God there is no punishment. For atheists the only punishment is that which human beings bring upon one another. So atheists reduce right and wrong to an individual choice, rather than some higher religous principle.

> This principle? Who made this principle? Who says people are equal? In the animal
> kingdom, if I'm stronger, you're toast. Sad for you but you get to die. So what
> separates us as human beings? How do the godless justify principles? Based on
> what???

If somebody is strong and can inflict force upon others, that does nto make that person superior, it merely makes them violent and aggressive, but not better. Superiority has nothing to do with strength or the ability to inflict violence. There is no such thing as superior or inferior in nature. The category of superiority exists only in the human mind. A big lion eating a tiny gazelle is not an example of the lion's superiority. It is merely a reflection of the lion's need to survive. The lion does not think to itself: "I am superior and I can kill as many gazelles as I want". The lion merely responds to its instinct to eat, to reproduce, to secure the survival of its species. That is Darwinism in action.

Social Darwinists apply the same idea to social systems. The strongest man defeats its competitors, and it is OK for that man to do so by whatever means are necessary. But the equality of human beings is not based merely on some abstract idea in the human mind. It is based on science. All human beings are made of the same basic elements: carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen. There is no such thing as superior oxygen or superior carbon. Neither are there superior proteins or inferior proteins, or superior DNA or inferior DNA. The molecules that make up a human being have no superiority or inferiority.

Then all human beings are born the same: helpless babies. There is no such thing as a superior or inferior baby. The categorization of superirity is imposed by the mind, not by nature. Then we say: this man is taller, or this man is stronger, or this man is smarter. However, nature has the ultimate equalizer: death. Everybody dies, and it does nto matter how strong or how smart or how rich or how poor you are. Death makes all human beings exaclty equal. You can die of cancer, or be murdered, or die in a tornado; but death is death plain and simple, and it makes everybody equal. For all of his superiority hogwash, Hitler was ultimate the same as everybody else and he died like everybody else dies.

So based on science and empirical observation one can prove that there is no such thing as superior or inferior human beings. Superiority is merely an abstract category in the human mind.

> "The only way a person can make a profit from others is by not paying them a fair
> wage for their labor."

> This is a false statement.

How so? A perfectly fair wage would mean that a person extracts 100% of the value of their labor. Not 99% for me and 1% for my boss, but 100% exactly. The only way my boss can extract a profit is if he takes the value of my labour, pays me a fraction, and keeps some for himself. The lower the fraction of my labour that is paid to me, the greater the profit that my boss makes.

Notice that I am talking about a perfect system in which it is possible for a person to extract 1005 of the value of their labour. In the real world it does not happen that way. A person can have a "good" salary, meaning that the fraction of the labour they receive is adequate to their expectations, in spite of their boss retaining a fraction for himself. That is what we call a "good company to work for". The employer pays a salary that allows the person to have a good life. That still does not make the salary perfectly fair. Companies are constatly looking for ways to lower the salaries paid to employees, so as to maximize profits. It is why they move production to other countries where labour is "cheaper", meaning that the employer can keep a higher proportion of the fair wage that should be paid to employees.

> You must have failed economics. If there were no profits, there'd be no business
> expansion. You couldn't restock the shelves. You couldn't keep up the store or save
> to open a second one.
> You have a very simplistic view of how an economic system works.

Far from simplistic. If anything, it explains how a CEO can give himself a $50 million bonus, while a whole bunch of employees in the third world get $1 per day. Capitalism requires a constant expansion of profits to ensure that a company has a constant increase in capital expansion. The only way to do that is by reducing production costs as much as possible, and the biggest expense in any company is usually the salaries paid to employees. The lower the salaries, the bigger the profits. It comes as no surprise that jobs have been exported out of rich industrialized nations and sent overseas.

> Again with your "right and wrong." Why should I care what you think about right and
> wrong? What if my view differs and I want you to see my view of right and wrong?
> Why should I accept what you say as an objective fact?

It is your personal choice. What you believe is meaningless until you act on it. If you believe that something is right or wrong, it can only be proven through your actions. You are under no obligation to believe what anybody else says. I have my views, you have yours. I can try to make my point across. Whether you accept it or not it is your own choice. I am well aware that you and I will never agree on 99% of anything. Why bother arguing then? Why should you even reply to any post knowing that people will not agree with you?