Eden - I attacked a political philosophy. Again....maybe if you could read and comprehend before replying. there are behavior patterns that are documented between concervatives and liberals. I pointed them out....if you choose to see that as a personal attack (like many liberals, you don't give to charity and don't do volunteer work) that is YOUR problem. I attacked NO individual with my primary point, which NONE of you have yet to address in your CONSTANT AD HOMINEM ATTACKS AGAINST ME. You hypocrisy is simply mind-numbing.

Eden....read your OWN words. "ad honiem is an attack on a person"....."you attacked <a political philosophy>" You admit in your own statement that I did NOT make a personal attack! How dense are you, really? (THAT was a personal attack...I said, YOU, not liberals. See the difference????)

(Damn it... I can't keep away....
Eden: the question really is "what" the market is, where does it sit ontologically. So far as our societies actually have a practice of recognizing businesses as moral entities, and they do, the market is not an amoral place. It very much is a context where moral values and moral agents act under certain constraints. The one ontological constraint that seems to be at the basis of the "market" is that of psychological egoism. The issue is, of course, that other contexts within which the market operates do not and cannot accept the idea that morality is grounded on psychological egoism. Much of our liberal systems of justice and political representation actually rest on a distinctly different principle, and that creates the clash that Tettleton is incapable of seeing.)

(I realize that this could be stated more coherently. Fatigue, heat and alcohol have had the best of me! But I do hope that those of you around here who can actually think beyond what gurus will tell them is true will understand what I'm trying to say!)

It's like arguing with three year olds who still believe in the Easter Bunny and can't handle multiple thougths at one time. Have fun Tettleton. I have been replied to 4 or 5 times now without ONE single point being addressed, and every reply has contained the very ad hominrm attacks they claim to despise. I love when they demonstrate their hypocrisy so clearly. good night. I win my points of argument by default.

(Oh, and by the way, whatever I say about Tettleton applies equally to Krellin it seems. What is wrong with you people?????? Have you really no idea of what it means to face necessity and see the possibilities dictated by pressures not of your choosing? You don't have a choice, nowadays, to interact with the market. It is not a transaction we willingly enter into. Just like you guys like to claim we don't get a choice to be taxed and it is an insult to our liberty, the market works very similarly. Try paying your contractor with gold and see how that goes. Gold is a currency, but not one that the market likes to use as such. And thus, you don't have that choice readily available to you... and that's just one example taken from the world of the rich, something that may find an echo in the empty heads of the libertarian dreamers. By the way, even Nozick realized he was wrong....)

Yes Krellin, you win. Big time. And your dreams will be good happy dreams....

The world's great religious philosophies recognized covetousness as a evil aspect in human character in a way that today's secular political philosophies completely ignore (another evil of the state.)

"Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." Rather we should learn to be content with what we have (Heb. 13:5)

You do not need to be Christian to recognize the wisdom of this scripture.

The Quran teaches The more a man becomes covetous the more he deprives him-self of peace of mind and falls in more grief and anger and burns in the internal fire. raging in his own heart.

We see this covetousness in American politics today when demagogues speak to those who covet about using the power of government to take.
We don't see the same demagogues talking about crimes successful individuals perpetuated to gain their wealth.
We only see the demagogues appealing to the weaker nature of those who covet.

It's amusing to see critiques of the market who cast it as always exploitive.
Food is produced in such quantities in America and distributed so efficiently that America has an epidemic of obesity, and the proponents of big government talk about the greed of the market.
Individuals in America have access to the most wholesome and cheapest food anywhere on the globe, and this access long predated the establishment of the FDA or other government apparatus.
The longevity of the lives of the settlers and the size of their families in the 1700's was testament to the bounty of the country, and the market that delivered it to the people.
Winifred Rothenberg demonstrated that a market for pork, labor, and grain existed in New England with price synchronicity in the 1750's.

Pete U, no one has to frequent an immoral business.
Sorry to point that out.

My frustration with this thread and at least two people in it, notwithstanding, I feel that Tettleton's Chew and krellin are working under a common misapprehension that I've decided, on balance, I would like to address.

For people on the left, individual choice, is not considered to be a powerful force. For people on the left, the problems of poverty, inequality and oppression, are large scale structural problems, that need to be addressed in a large scale structural way. Any solution to a moral social problem that doesn't seek to change the way society is structured is doomed to fail. Power structures as they exist, unconsciously, and without intention can and do tend to quash or simply overwhelm any personal level move to improve things.

"ad honiem is an attack on a person"....."you attacked <a political philosophy>" You admit in your own statement that I did NOT make a personal attack!

Maybe you should read my own words instead. I said you attacked THOSE OF A LEFT-LEANING ORIENTATION and PEOPLE ON THE LEFT. Both of these entities are people. You attacked the people as being less charitable, etc. Not the philosophy. The people.

And in case you haven't noticed, I haven't attacked you. At all. I have described what you have done and I have described your post. I have not said anything negative about you personally.

@Cachimbo: I know I personally don't see businesses as a moral entity. They're an instrument for profit, a vehicle to allow people to create value in the form of a product or service or what have you and trade it for equivalent [ideally] value in a more desirable form. Whether or not they commit moral or immoral acts is not tied to any inherent sense of morality or immorality but rather to the committing of such acts as a means to generate more value at a faster rate. That's about as amoral as it goes.

Now, you have agents which generally tend to act like businesses -- with first priority being to exchange value favorably -- but these agents exist for more than just creating profit or value for themselves. An agent may have an overarching moral system that overrides the profit motive, and often does when the agent is fully aware of the moral consequences of its actions in the market. And likewise, businesses are run by agents who may let their moral system override profit motive as well.

But the market itself is neither. It's the place where this occurs. I realize the horse drawing a slave wagon isn't the best example; perhaps instead the market is the roads on which the slaves are transported or the actual plaza where the slaves are sold. It is no more than the infrastructure on which transactions of varying moral degrees are made, and is therefore neither moral nor immoral.

This thread needs a different title. "Another useless thread from Tettleton about why liberals suck." And a thread about people coveting from a republican is kind of ironic. Rich people want to stay rich and become more rich.

Oh and "The world's great religious philosophies," I would leave out religion when talking about morality. Especially referring to the bible. Thats a mess just waiting to happen.

If I mute someone, do the threads they started also disappear? I guess I'll find out... I certainly hope so.

Ah... that was beautiful. It worked! I actually had to unmute him momentarily so I could see this thread again and report back. I'm out of here for good now. I highly recommend this feature. It's like I erased TC from my world. Sweet.

@dexter morgan - Yes, and if you mute Tettleton's Chew virtually no threads remain at all on the home page.

your all idiots and wrong! Both government and corporations are immoral. So which do we choose. I choose the corporations cause their immorality is more efficient.

and leads to progress

Corporations aren't the market.
Corporations are simply players in the market.
Circuit City gone. Blockbuster dying. The list of corporations that come and go from the market it endless.

in this thread: no one seems to understand the difference between IMMORAL and AMORAL

Government is not benign. It is corrosive and corrupt. It is a necessary evil or a state of nature persists, but government needs it power divided, checked, and balanced.

The true evil of government is what the sheep, those covetous individuals, will do to support and sustain the government the sheep are dependent on.

The Holocaust is a perfect example. The millions of Jews, gypsies, poles, and other ethnic groups died at the hands of individual, willing Germans.

"Hitler's Henchmen" by Michael Coffeen details the actions taken by ordinary Germans during the Holocaust, and it reveals a mindset of people who lost their sense of self and individuality in their dependence on the Nazi state.

52 replies, the sheep are stampeding.

Back to Australia for me.

The most immoral thing of all is an individual who doesn't have access to a job in the marketplace. What is truly immoral about big government is the mindset that believes a handout provides the same self-respect of employment or ownership

Strawman argument is made of straw.

Tiresome fool is tiresome, also.

*rolls eyes* Will you stop calling people sheep? It makes you sound like a pretentious douchebag. And stop calling people covetous. This is honestly the problem. You rich, free market loving, money grubbing, republican assholes think that you're so smart because you've got so much stuff and everyone else is envious because they'll never be smart enough to do as well as you have. Ugh. Well guess what. If you're successful, it's not because you're smart. It's not because you did anything particularly well. It's because society is massively biased in your favour, because you're white, and you come from a reasonably well off family. And there are so many people who have to fight against this very same system, which, while it's helping lift you up, it also keeping them down. It's time you learned once and for all Tettleton, the reason you have what you have is because it was appropriated from the people beneath you. But you are just so fucking privileged and entitled that you think you deserve everything you have don't you? You think you've earned it. And you'll reply here saying you actually came from a totally poor family and the only reason you're where you are now is because you worked hard. But that isn't how the world works. You're not smart, you're not skilled. You're lucky. And it's time you realized that.

And before you say I'm just another one of these covetous sheep who wants all your stuff, you should know, I'm also a white male from a reasonably well off family. I have a good education and a decent start at a life (but I'm still only in my early 20's). In other words I'm not the kind of person who benefits from left wing social policy, but I'm not some entitled prick, jealously hoarding all the money I can. But you. You and your pure, unadulterated greed, and callous disregard for other people, which you've made all too clear in this thread, you make me sick. You disgust me.

I don't honestly think you'll actually take in a word I've said in this post. I don't think I've done a good job actually explaining what I'm trying to say, but right now, I don't care. All I know is, that saying all this, has made me feel damn good.

tettleton dont discussion over the size of government ever just kind of bore you?

No, the size of government is the critical issue in my country right now. Why would the most critical issue of my country bore me? I'm not a sheep.

"What is truly immoral about big government is the mindset that believes a handout provides the same self-respect of employment or ownership"

This is similar what Marx though about people "owning" their labor. Weird that you substitute "the bourgeois" for "big government" and the argument becomes super leftist. Haha, it's all about choosing your evils.