Übergeek 바둑이:
"The only way a person can make a profit from others is by not paying them a fair wage for their labour. If wages were perfectly fair, nobody could make a profit. But the extraction of plusvalue from other people's wages is what makes profits possible."

Actually, profits and wealth can be measured in other ways. All can profit either equally or unequally. Money itself is only a unit of exchange giving relative value to a wide variety of goods and services.
Forgetting about the monetary value of goods and services for a moment, a group of people may utilize a division of labor in which some build, others farm or hunt and others maintain the families and education while all in the group benefit and advance as a society.
Society is not initially built on a system of competition demanding winners and losers. The winners and losers approach is artificial and, when taken to the extreme, detrimental.
Money itself does not create this extreme. Corporations can profit while paying its employees sufficient wages for them to do well and accumulate property and or savings.

Übergeek 바둑이:

There are a lot of factors that lead to poverty. Capitalism leads to prosperity. Where has there been a system that has brought prosperity to so many? I'd like to know what you'd replace the system with.

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.

When you speak of equality, you don't mean middle class equality. What you mean is poor equality. And 2/3 of the people in the US are not living in poverty. Show me the stats. BTW, it's true that you can be considered poor even though you own a house, and have more than one TV, and other expensive gadgets. That's laughable.

I"m saying that atheists have no basis for right and wrong.

Who says it's wrong to kill? On what basis?

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.

"This is a matter of belief. A person can believe that it is OK to kill for money. That does not make it right. Everybody has a sense of right and wrong. If exploiting others is right, then do not feel bad when somebody comes and exploits you or your family. If it is OK for somebody to profit by using others, then it is OK for everybody to do the same. It is the final conclusion of the existentialist ethic. My actions make a statement about the whole world. If it is OK to be selfish for one person, then it is OK to be selfish for everybody."

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?

"Who says? Well, you can ask 6 million Jews and 8 million gypsies that died in the Holocaust. If ANY cause is acceptable, then there is nothing wrong with the Nazis."

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?

"Why is exploitation wrong? Because it goes against the one principle that nobody can deny: human beings are equal."

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???

"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.

"If wages were perfectly fair, nobody could make a profit."

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.

"Our ideology is nothing but empty words. It is only through actions that we ultimately display our true sense of right and wrong."

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?
Reply (box)

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?

Übergeek 바둑이: You want to single out capatilism as the culprit around the world for the poor being poor? How is it that they were poor before capitalism? Are there any poor in countries that are not capitalist? We are talking about a system and as a system, capitalism cannot oppress the poor anymore than any other system can.
People are the ones who oppress the poor. And it doesn't matter what economic system is at play, there will be poor. Do you think that under Communism there was an actual utopia? Is there no exploitation of the weak? How about a socialist utopia? Where is this place where everyone is equal? Why are people not flocking to live there? Instead, they want to come to America.

Artful Dodger:

I have a great idea. Since EVERY system is bad, let's convince ourselves that there is NOTHING wrong with capitalism. Let's treat poverty as something external. It belongs in the Third World and the rich empires that use those countries and those people for profit have NO RESPONSIBILITY whatsoever for what goes on there. Since that poverty is outside the USA, the fact that American companies make a profit in those countries those not even count when it come sto capitalism.

> People are the ones who oppress the poor.

And who makes capitalism? Geese? Capitalism is the result of PEOPLE pursing profit. So those PEOPLE who oppress the poor are the ruling class, and in capitalism it is those who own the means of production; i.e.: the rich capitalists.

Capitalism has changed nothing, except replace the old feudal lords and the old aristocracy with the mechant class. Instead of a feudal lord, now you have a factory owner, or a CEO.

The reason why there is poor today is simply because the unfair and unequal distribution of wealth has been formalized in the name of profit. Nothing new there. Modern capitalism might be an economic success, but it is also a social failure because it has failed to eliminate poverty, exploitation and hunger.

The Soviet Union (like China) might have been run by the communist party, but it was in essence a form of state capitalism. Instead of the monopolies belonging to CEOs in Wall Street, the monolopy was run by the state. The Soviet Union was run by a communist elite, the USA is run by an elitist plutocracy made of the wealthy donors and lobbyists that run the political parties. The only reason why that plutocracy allows a two party pseudo-democracy is just to keep the general public from exploding into anarchy and revolution.

Übergeek 바둑이: you are simply blinded by your misguided hatred of capatialism. Again I ask, where is this perfect system in play so we can observe it? Which country?

Übergeek 바둑이: "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."

If a claim has no basis other than the claim itself, then all claims would be equal. So rape is wrong and rape is right. Both are statements and if the basis for each statement is simply the claim itself, both are right (which is a contradiction and won't stand).

"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 really believe this, then why do you complain that corporations do things to get rich? Isn't that simply their personal choice?


"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?"

I'm actually saying that as an atheist, you have no grounds to argue against things you claim are "wrong." I say Al Qaeda is "wrong" because they kill people without justification. But when I say justification, I mean more than I just don't like it. I mean it's objectively wrong to kill another person without moral justification. For the atheist, it is only subjectively wrong. They don't like it. But beyond not liking it, they have no foundational argument.

"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."

Here's where you are wrong. You argue that simply because you say so, something is right or wrong. If something is truly wrong, it's wrong for both you and I. It's wrong independent of your feelings to the contrary. Otherwise it is benign. Consequences don't matter. They don't determine if something is right or wrong. Consequences are implemented by a society against a particular act it deems offensive. But for something to be objectively wrong, it would be wrong EVEN IF nobody believed it. (such as abortion).

Abortion is either wrong or it is not wrong. It is not both. Same with stealing or lying or killing. They are either morally justified or they are not. It is not a personal choice that determines right or wrong.

Since something can be truly objectively wrong (killing babies for fun) then they are transcendent truths. Since objective truth exists, there must be an objective truth giver that transcends our human intellect.

Artful Dodger:
The following argument employs an a priori<i/> fallacy:
"If a claim has no basis other than the claim itself, then all claims would be equal."
Sharing a common characteristic does not imply equality.

Artful Dodger:
The following argument employs an a priori fallacy:
"If a claim has no basis other than the claim itself, then all claims would be equal."
Sharing a common characteristic does not imply equality.

Übergeek 바둑이:
For one, you have given me no rational argument for why others should care about the suffering that goes around in the world. When I say, "who cares about the rest of the world?" I am pointing out that you have to have a basis in which to care about the suffering of others. Sure, you don't like that there is suffering but what if John Smith does't care? How will you convince him otherwise? You speak of selfishness but then that is a moral requirement of whom? Says you? I shouldn't be selfish? Aren't you being selfish to suggest how I should think? Is it wrong to be selfish? Who says?

You assume many things. And maybe I agree with much of what you say. But there must be a basis, a foundation that holds together the things you proclaim as truth. It's wrong to be selfish. This seems to be an assumption you have. Ok then, what is selfishness and why is it wrong? Who determines that it is wrong?

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I am not a social darwinist. I'm asking you to show me why it's WRONG to exploit the weak. Because you say so? Why were the Nazis wrong and you are right? Is it more than just a difference of opinion? How so?