Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

[Foxton]

Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

The Chinese and Indians would like 5000 years of words with you...

It's startlingly egocentric how he just co-opted the entire "good" side of human history for his favored sky daddy. Even though it shouldn't exist according to him.

 

[5mn_Major]

Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

The Indians would like 5000 years of words with you...

Who? The Untouchables?

I might qualify the world's most discriminatory classist system in the world to have competitive underpinnings.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

Who? The Untouchables?

I might qualify the world's most discriminatory classist system in the world to have competitive underpinnings.

Right back atcha with 2000 years of brutal Christian misogyny. What's that? It's unfair to tar a religion for something some of its practioners do, and which has its roots long before that religion's prophet?

Exactly.

Reducing world history to "everyone was in darkness until X" is inane, regardless of your special X. Unless X is Geneviève Bujold.

As for the supposed overdetermination of all history by any given Y, say, competition, that's just retconning currentism. You're making the same mistake Marx did.

 

[St. Clown]

Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

Reducing world history to "everyone was in darkness until X" is inane, regardless of your special X. Unless X is Geneviève Bujold.

In that picture, she did have some great eyes. Her forehead looks like it would be a match for Clint Howard's, though, save the hairline.

 

[FreshFish]

Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

Very true. Better said, competition is a basis for life. In life, cooperation does occur in smaller family/social units. More total cooperation is a recent human phenomenon...in large part driven by the teachings of Jesus.

But if you're focused on how to have things go well for you...remember to address your ability to 'compete'. Then you have the ability 'cooperate' on your own terms.

an evolutionary biologist (e.g., E.O. Wilson) might say that in certain instances, 'cooperation' gives a species a competitive advantage: see bee colonies, ant colonies, termite colonies, wolves that hunt in packs, lions that hunt in prides, dolphins and whales that hunt in pods, etc. Even for the prey, 'cooperation' by milling about together in large herds reduces the chances of any one ungulate being eaten. (cue the hoary chestnut about when a bear is chasing you and me, I don't have to outrun the bear, I merely have to run faster than you...)

 

[Kepler]

Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

'cooperation' gives a species a competitive advantage: see bee colonies, ant colonies, termite colonies, wolves that hunt in packs, lions that hunt in prides, dolphins and whales that hunt in pods, etc.

Evo Bio has been trying to tease apart the degree to which many species (including primates, and hence humans) are predisposed to empathy as an evolutionary advantage. Nature actually isn't as red in tooth and claw as the kind of people who beat off to Hobbes like to pretend to justify their malice.

 

[5mn_Major]

Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

Right back atcha with 2000 years of brutal Christian misogyny. What's that? It's unfair to tar a religion for something some of its practioners do, and which has its roots long before that religion's prophet?

On its weakest points, it was no more brutal than the rest of society (serfdom), power brokers (kings/nobles) or whatever other societal force your talking about. On its strong points (health care, education, information, care for the less fortunate, etc.), it frequently led the best society had to offer. Its an overall trade off that goes in well in favor of Christianity over the totality of comparables...with the implications are that we're many years ahead of where we would have been in its fields of compassion without its foundation. No question.

 

[St. Clown]

Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

On its weakest points, it was no more brutal than the rest of society (serfdom), power brokers (kings/nobles) or whatever other societal force your talking about. On its strong points (health care, education, information, care for the less fortunate, etc.), it frequently led the best society had to offer. Its an overall trade off that goes in well in favor of Christianity over the totality of comparables...with the implications are that we're many years ahead of where we would have been in its fields of compassion without its foundation. No question.

Yes, because going from the end of the Roman Empire into Medieval Europe was a huge step forward for everyone's quality of life and architecture as a whole... We didn't lose any collective knowledge with the Church's purging of "non-Christian" books pertaining to science and mathematics. Everything just went straight down the primrose path, making us a better people, because Christ Almighty, Christians did it right.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

On its weakest points, it was no more brutal than the rest of society (serfdom), power brokers (kings/nobles) or whatever other societal force your talking about. On its strong points (health care, education, information, care for the less fortunate, etc.), it frequently led the best society had to offer. Its an overall trade off that goes in well in favor of Christianity over the totality of comparables...with the implications are that we're many years ahead of where we would have been in its fields of compassion without its foundation. No question.

You are confusing technology with religion. By the terms of your type of argument you could as easily say "white skin leads to a better society." You're making enormous unjustified leaps.

Not to mention that the explosion in both quality of life and freedom of political institutions comes to the West at the very moment when Christianity begins to be pushed from its monopoly of social control and the very idea of a secular public sphere comes into being. If you want to make a simple "correlation equals causation" argument, then it's the absence of religion that fosters the good in man.

 

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

Yes, because going from the end of the Roman Empire into Medieval Europe was a huge step forward for everyone's quality of life and architecture as a whole... We didn't lose any collective knowledge with the Church's purging of "non-Christian" books pertaining to science and mathematics. Everything just went straight down the primrose path, making us a better people, because Christ Almighty, Christians did it right.

If you want to control a group, you have to make 'em stupid.

 

[FreshFish]

Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

the kind of people who beat off to Hobbs [sic]

Hey, buddy, knock it off! Calvin and Hobbes is an iconic classic to many of us! and the discussion about people marrying stuffed tigers belongs in the latest SCOTUS thread anyway, no?

 

[Kepler]

Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

Hey, buddy, knock it off! Calvin and Hobbes is an iconic classic to many of us! and the discussion about people marrying stuffed tigers belongs in the latest SCOTUS thread anyway, no?

Crap. Good catch. Fixed below.

 

[The Sicatoka]

Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

If you want to control a group, you have to make 'em stupid.

Here's a topic: The Iron Mountain Report, fact or fiction.

Discuss amongst yourselves.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

Here's a topic: The Iron Mountain Report, fact or fiction.

Discuss amongst yourselves.

"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." -- H. L. Mencken

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vQaVIoEjOM&list=RD9vQaVIoEjOM

 

[5mn_Major]

Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

You are confusing technology with religion. By the terms of your type of argument you could as easily say "white skin leads to a better society." You're making enormous unjustified leaps.

Technology is a tool. Christianity (in terms of influence on individuals) is a driver. I understand them quite well.

Healthcare is a fraction of the benefits that came as a result of Christianity (and all of today's healthcare is built on it):

Monasteries developed not only as spiritual centers, but also centers of intellectual learning and medical practice. Locations of the monasteries were secluded and designed to be self-sufficient, which required the monastic inhabitants to produce their own food and also care for their sick. Prior to the development of hospitals, people from the surrounding towns looked to the monasteries for help with their sick. Besides documentation the Middle Ages also had one of the first well known female physicians, Hildegard of Bingen.

Hildegard was born in 1098 and at the age of fourteen she entered the double monastery of Dissibodenberg.[27] She wrote the medical text Causae et curae in which many medical practices of the time were demonstrated. This book contained diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of many different diseases and illnesses. This text was able to shed light on medieval medical practices of the time.

In the Medieval period the term hospital encompassed hostels for travellers, dispensaries for poor relief, clinics and surgeries for the injured, and homes for the blind, lame, elderly, and mentally ill. Monastic hospitals developed many treatments, both therapeutic and spiritual. Following the French Norman invasion into England, the explosion of French ideals led most Medieval monasteries to develop a hospitium or hospice for pilgrims. This hospitium eventually developed into what we now understand as a hospital, with various monks and lay helpers providing the medical care for sick pilgrims and victims of the numerous plagues and chronic diseases that afflicted Medieval Western Europe.

- Wiki

 

[Kepler]

Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

Hospitals actually got started in the Arab world; crusaders brought the idea back to Europe, and combined with the rediscovery of books by Galen medical care was on its way.

Not to mention that the Chinese and Japanese had their own independent burgeoning of both monastic and medical institutions.

Religions aren't typically drivers, they're part of the ideological superstructure that is produced by economics, technology, and native cultural practices. (e.g., you get polytheisms where empires collide and intermingle state cults, and monotheism among isolated cultures that reject (or are denied) intermarriage and assimilation.)

There are certainly knock-on effects of religions, particularly when they go through periodic revivalist movements, but again those "awakenings" are themselves caused by material conditions like economic or military disruptions. Religions also serve to reinforce power structures and so they can become suddenly extremely powerful when there are fights between factions inside a culture (as during say the abolitionist and civil rights movements in the US, or the English Civil War).

Religion, much like politics, is typically reactive, but because it's so emotionally involving (and sees itself in totalitarian terms) it tends to ascribe effects to itself. But only good effects, of course.

 

[5mn_Major]

Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

As has been discussed here many times, strictly ideological arguments are typically soft on facts.

Hospitals actually got started in the Arab world; crusaders brought the idea back to Europe, and combined with the rediscovery of books by Galen medical care was on its way.

If true, how do those points negate any Christian impact on the history of health care?

So is Wiki wrong when it says "prior to the development of hospitals, people from the surrounding towns looked to the monasteries for help with their sick" and "the explosion of French ideals led most Medieval monasteries to develop a hospitium or hospice for pilgrims and this eventually developed into what we now understand as a hospital"?

Not to mention that the Chinese and Japanese had their own independent burgeoning of both monastic and medical institutions.

Not seeing any significant monastic delivery of health care in Shaolin or Buddhist temples.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaolin_Monastery
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_temples_in_Japan

Some how, somewhere, Galen turned into the Mayo Clinic. And that has come almost exclusively from Christian countries. In fact from the Medical History in Japan: The story of the modernisation of Japanese medicine is normally told within the framework of the successful introduction of Western medicine from Germany.

Religions aren't typically drivers.

A driver is defined as a 'factor that provides motivation'. Are you telling me religions don't provide individual motivations for people's actions?

 

[Kepler]

Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

A driver is defined as a 'factor that provides motivation'. Are you telling me religions don't provide individual motivations for people's actions?

You are confusing the societal level to the individual level.

At the individual level, religious faith is an important psychological coping mechanism to deal with the lack of interest the natural world has in us or our happiness, and in the fact of our mortality.

At the social level, religiosity is a functional mechanism that serves a huge number of functions, depending on the level of organization and size of the society. In primative social groups religions define reality and reinforce authority to such a large extent that it doesn't even make sense to identify "religion" as in any way separate from society as a whole -- it's all just one messy porridge. As the society gets bigger and more complicated religious institutions as separately-identifiable, entities form that are "religious," and over time they lose functions to societal and finally state mechanisms: government, law, science, etc.

But at the large level, religions don't produce cultures, cultures produce religions. "The gods of the oxen shall be oxen," etc.

tl; dr: You're not going to get any of this, so why bother.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

As has been discussed here many times, strictly ideological arguments are typically soft on facts.

BTW, this is hilarious. You have been regurgitating Christian apologetics in the guise of history, and your assertions have no basis in empirical fact. IIRC you were also the guy with the piffle about the crusades. MSU appears to have outsourced its history program to Liberty for the time you were there.

Please read some books.

 

[Rover]

Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

People, please. Lets all try to love each other a little bit more. Peace and love and all that sh !t, 'kay?