germanforestgump wrote:Hello Keith,
feel welcome to this forum!
You have a very interesting lifeway until now!
I looked a bit over your activities...
Unfortunately, my english is not good enough for to understand all aspects.
And for to explain what is irritating me about what motivates somebody first work for to save life by expanding it to the universe,
and afterwards dealing with "raptor economy":
Isn´t this naming attractive for a specific kind of people?
For people who don´t waste many thoughts about ethics?
Isn´t their form of economy the activity most dangerous for life?
Surely i understand too less of economy but it is like an ecosystem.
Do we have to accept an economic ecosystem of "raptor and prey"?
Will such an economy not kill life before it succeded to jump from earth to space?
And for what expand to the stars if life will be there also a never ending struggle against economic terrorism?
Is it responsible to contaminate other planetes with our terroristic economy?
I ´m not shure whether i would prefer extinction to end pain...
Shurely i misunderstood many aspects...
..it would be kind if You could please explain...?
with friendly greetings,
Your Hans
Hans!
Thanks for taking the time to ask.
I'm going to do my best to interpret the thrust of your question, which seems to be "isn't capitalism sort of evil?"
The short answer is it certainly can be. Same as Socialism once turned into "National Socialism" a.k.a. the German Nazi Party, Capitalism is prone to turning feral and cannibalistic when in the hands of madmen (and there are many examples of modern corporations that are run by lunatics.) The intent in both systems certainly starts as well meaning though. I'll save discussions of Socialism and other "isms" for some other time as the question asked appears to be limited to wagging a finger at Capitalism, especially as it is practiced today by American Mega-Corporations.
The theoretical underpinnings of modern capitalism come from professor Adam Smith's "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nation" (WON). WON was not Dr. Smith's life's work however (he was in fact not even a professor of economics but rather of 'moral philosophy'). WON is basically a large parenthetical explanation of a specific point in his life's work, which was "The Theory Of Moral Sentiments", which lays out the presumed reasons people will sometimes [oftentimes??] act in ways that reflect the needs of others ahead of their own self interest. In this long sidebar explanation, capitalism explains many things and relies on an important assumption that we are dealing with an ideal scenario where the markets are both 'free' and 'fair'.
Modern capitalism is probably making poor Dr. Smith turn in his grave! It is a long way from free or fair and has become very distorted to the benefit of "them that's already got" at the expense of "them that's ain't got." Instead of making things better, e.g. more moral, this has many effects some of which are undesirable. Surely, not the result hoped for by a professor of Moral Philosophy.
In my writings, I shy away from preaching, which I wouldn't be good at anyway. I do attempt to make the world a slightly better place by 1) accepting the system is corrupt 2) giving others the tools to escape wage-slavery and thus do their own part to make the world a slightly better place (instead of scrambling to make ends meet as a sheepish consumerist drone.) That is, I show people how to level the playing field and escape from the worst personal effects capitalism is having on individuals and families. And I do this partly by turning heavily abused processes of the financial industry against itself. Some will certainly take that the wrong way. I accept that people, like Capitalism, are imperfect and do the best I can with what I have.
Your Mileage May Vary.
Does that more or less answer your question?
-keith-