Zooey wrote:

nittany ram wrote:

PA Ram wrote:

. As you said, Nittany–he is the best candidate of my lifetime–and I’m 54(Today by the way–where’s my cake?).

Happy birthday, PA. As I’ve said before, pound for pound you’re our finest Amish poster.

If that commie cake is red velvet, I’ll take a piece.

Oh, you old commie sympathizers should know better. It’s a combination of wheat flour and wallpaper paste.

So wheat flour and wheat flour and water. That waiting line must stretch around the corner.

Billy_T wrote:

I have yet to see you post any references at all.

Why should I? It wouldn’t matter with you. I know my family’s history but of course you know better!

Find your utopia and move there. Oh wait, it doesn’t have a name and doesn’t exist but you can reference it in a book. Nice. How’s that working for you?

Billy_T wrote:

I see a pattern post feudalism in which common people were paid wages for their hard work and enterprise and some were able to achieve greater wealth than the nobility. The rest improved their economic situation affording opportunities previously denied them. It is called capitalism. At present no other system is poised to replace it.

They had to sell their labor power in the first place because the rise of capitalism destroyed their way of life, forced them off their small farms, crushed their ability to self-provide through their own home industries, their own artisanship or craftswork. They had no choice but to go into the factories where they made a fraction of what they used to make on their own, and had to work many, many more hours to get even that.

And I just gave you stats to disprove your theory that “the rest improved their economic situation affording opportunities previously denied them.” No. They were far worse off than they were prior to the rise of capitalism, and in bad times, in much more dangerous straits. Now, they no longer can fall back on their own farms and small crafts. That’s almost all been destroyed by factory farms and mass production.

Did you know that more than 3 billion humans live on less than $2.00 a day around the world? Many tens of millions go to bed each night hungry, and several million die of starvation. Just 60 humans, worldwide, now hold as much wealth as the bottom 3.6 billion.

Seriously, how on earth can you continue to cheerlead for a system that produces such massive inequality, hunger, starvation, pollution and waste?

Wrong again. Feudalism drove people off the land and into the service of the nobility. When the Black Plague depopulated europe labor came at a premium and wages were paid for the first time. Specialization and the rise of guilds set the stage for capitalism with the onset of the industrial revolution.

My people were coal miners. If they weren’t then that was because they were forced into military service for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Time and time again until they could pay their way here. In their lifetime they bettered their life here and four generations later their family has further bettered their lives. Capitalism can work.

Dak wrote:

Yes, that was a very good article.

American politics is disgusting. In a fair and open-minded arena, the media would be fawning over Sanders the underdog. Instead, he’s held nearly in contempt. How dare he continue to challenge the anointed Democrat? Hillary has “paid her dues.” …

Reminds me of the GOP anointing of Bob Dole in ’96. Bill got a gift. Hillary won’t. The collusion between the two parties ends with Trump.

Billy_T wrote:

bnw,

Modern touch screen technology was invented in Oak Ridge, TN in 1977. I’ve been in that very room many times. It was funded by the private sector.

It’s a side issue, but, no. Touch screen tech wasn’t invented in 1977, or in Tennessee.

From touch displays to the Surface: A brief history of touchscreen technology

Historians generally consider the first finger-driven touchscreen to have been invented by E.A. Johnson in 1965 at the Royal Radar Establishment in Malvern, United Kingdom. Johnson originally described his work in an article entitled “Touch display—a novel input/output device for computers” published in Electronics Letters. The piece featured a diagram describing a type of touchscreen mechanism that many smartphones use today—what we now know as capacitive touch. Two years later, Johnson further expounded on the technology with photographs and diagrams in “Touch Displays: A Programmed Man-Machine Interface,” published in Ergonomics in 1967.

CERN, in the early 1970s, another public sector creation, did the vast majority of the rest of the research and development, before other groups jumped in. Private companies didn’t jump in — they never do — until after public sector institutions did the heavy lifting. Oh, and the vast majority of all telecom technology innovations are based on a foundation put down by great mathematicians, and that goes back centuries. They weren’t in the private sector. They were primarily teachers, professors, etc.

As I wrote MODERN touch screen technology was invented in Oak Ridge, TN in 1977. This is the technology in wide use today. Three years earlier clear screen technology was invented in Oak Ridge, TN. Both were funded by the private sector.

Careful Billy you’re very close to Obama’s ‘you didn’t build that business’.

Billy_T wrote:

bnw,

Of course endowments are private donations. Donations derived via CAPITALISM. 13.2% interest earned via CAPITALISM.

Indeed change is inevitable. Human nature is not. Capitalism has lasted as long and permeated the world because of it.

How long do you think capitalism has been around? Please be specific. And please describe what you think it actually is. Because in America, it wasn’t dominant until after the Civil War. More than 80% of American workers were self-employed, and not capitalists up until the late 1870s. We had thriving universities, with endowments, and “private donations” before it took control. Capitalism has never, ever been required for people to make those donations. People gave to the arts, to universities, to medical research, etc. etc. centuries upon centuries before its advent.

It is also the case that even under the capitalist system, the public sector has been responsible for the vast majority of all innovations we use on a day to day basis. Not capitalism. The Internet, touch screen technology, satellite tech, GPS, the computer — to name a few — all came from public sector research and development. The vast majority of new medical breakthroughs also come from the public sector, primarily NIH. We could easily do without the private sector and still fund all of our universities, research triangles and so on. The public sector could do everything done currently by the private sector, and better, and for far less costs to citizens. The private sector also routinely impedes progress, chiefly because it won’t move on innovations if they don’t produce immediate profits — and most great innovations don’t.

Read David Graeber’s excellent Of Flying cars and the declining rate of profit for a good break down of the above.

I’d say capitalism came about as a result of the industrial revolution. Capitalism is the system in which anyone can achieve wealth.

Modern touch screen technology was invented in Oak Ridge, TN in 1977. I’ve been in that very room many times. It was funded by the private sector.

zn wrote:

bnw wrote:

Sure universities were around but not with $13.5 billion endowments earning 13.2% interest. That is due to capitalism. List the societies! 13.2%! At that rate these days I call complete and total BS on your assertion in your first sentence. List those “societies”. 13.2%. Wow.

What about me would make you think that I defend “conformity”? Especially here. Really? Other than an occasional poster chiming in I’m the only regular poster that essentially stands alone in regards to support for capitalism, Trump, defense of marriage, secure borders and against the religion of man made global warming. Plus I can’t stand StanK.

I look forward to you giving the examples Chomsky has that would replace capitalism.

Yes universities always had endowments. Endowments are private donations. They’re not profit. And societies in the present that are highly socialistic also have universities with endowments. And the societies surrounding those universities always include people that say don’t criticize the system, you are there because of the system, just go along with the system. It’s one of the things you can count on some people saying in both the USA and North Korea. Meanwhile, although it isn’t uniformly effective, the whole point of a university is to generate and sustain different ways of looking at the truth.

I wasn’t talking about “examples that would replace capitalism” btw…I was talking about specific policies. I also wasn’t talking about capitalism. As with all things, there’s more than one kind of capitalism too. Notice what I said instead was the mega-corporate oligarchic version of capitalism.

But either way capitalism will be replaced. Cause all systems are. Otherwise we would all still be living in the first system (at the level of a civilization, which is beyond tribes and clans, that probably means ancient “monarch as diety” style kingships).

And btw every single system that has ever existed claims it is natural, inevitable, the only real possibility, the only thing that works, etc. It’s a rule of human history–invent a socio-economic system and immediately people start going see, this is the way it was meant to be, nothing can change this, this is reality, nothing else exists or counts. That’s just the way most people in a particular civilization always talk about it. And…yet, all systems have always changed.

…

Of course endowments are private donations. Donations derived via CAPITALISM. 13.2% interest earned via CAPITALISM.

Indeed change is inevitable. Human nature is not. Capitalism has lasted as long and permeated the world because of it.

I still look forward to you giving the examples Chomsky has that would replace capitalism.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by bnw.

Rubley saw action in two NFL seasons in 1993 and 1995. He started 7 games for the Rams during the 1993 season. With limited playing time and being waived numerous times by NFL teams, Rubley found success with the Rhein Fire of the WLAF and played briefly with Hamilton Tiger-Cats and Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the CFL.

I did not post that.

zn wrote:

bnw wrote:

zn wrote:

wv wrote:

Why do the masses of voters and nonvoters allow that?

Ideology.

bnw wrote:

I suspect he pees in the very wheaties that pays his salary.

MIT pays him to be knowlewdgable and speak his mind.

Good universities are not real big on the “shut up and conform to the powers that be” routine. That would kind of defeat their purpose. Or, real purpose.

And there’s nothing Chomsky commends that isn’t being successfully done somewhere in the world.

That’s one of the things he’s paid to know.

#1, Yes his largesse is due to CAPITALISM. He does pee in his wheaties.

#2. Where are his examples? Would love to see something on the scale of a nation that spans a continent with a minimum of 200 million people of multi-racial multi-cultural make up. Scale is everything and that is where he fails.

#1. No it’s not. Not at a private university with a 13.5 billion dollar endowment, it’s not. In fact the reason we have such things as universitues is so that not everything gets crushed down into the same “propaganda for the present system” sound bites. That’s because in a democracy, we’re NOT supposed to all think the same…or, it’s not really a democracy. Those who believe in democracy therefore actually value there being diverse ideas.

#2. Name a thing, I’ll name the example. Just don’t keep moving the goalposts. That way we don’t have to make up things like the idea (supported by nothing) that the larger the population the less you can deviate from capitalist oligarchy.

…

#1. Oh yes it is. It very much is. That $13.5 billion endowment is averaging a return of 13.2% per year! You can’t get that return on government bonds or notes! You get that return from CAPITALISM. The same CAPITALISM that created the endowment. Diverse ideas, please! Like the stifling of any dissent (supported by facts) regarding man made global warming?

#2. No, Chomsky needs to name his real world examples that solve the capitalist tendencies of mankind. Yes, scale does matter.

zn wrote:

wv wrote:

Why do the masses of voters and nonvoters allow that?

Ideology.

bnw wrote:

I suspect he pees in the very wheaties that pays his salary.

MIT pays him to be knowlewdgable and speak his mind.

Good universities are not real big on the “shut up and conform to the powers that be” routine. That would kind of defeat their purpose. Or, real purpose.

And there’s nothing Chomsky commends that isn’t being successfully done somewhere in the world.

That’s one of the things he’s paid to know.

Yes his largesse is due to CAPITALISM. He does pee in his wheaties.

Where are his examples? Would love to see something on the scale of a nation that spans a continent with a minimum of 200 million people of multi-racial multi-cultural make up. Scale is everything and that is where he fails.

By what largesse is Chomsky employed and thus paid? I suspect he pees in the very wheaties that pays his salary. Does he have an example to give us of his vision at work successfully in this world?

Is Mark Rebilas Saffold’s agent? How can an anchor be in only 4 games? The first 4 games at that. That anchor chain broke and the O-line ship sailed on closing out the season with what I thought was decent play. BTW that cohesion thing that can only happen if you PLAY. After so many games missed over a career to use Saffold’s name and cohesion for anything other than the IR is false advertising.

Certainly didn’t post it to antagonize anyone. I disagree that it is racist. Blacks use that phrase about blacks who have earned it. No different than whites using it about whites that have earned it. And here both races use both.

You live in Maine. I live in Tennessee. Maine is 97% white, 0.5% black. Tennessee is 80% white, 16% black. I’ve also lived in Mississippi and I know what is said in mixed company as well as the intent. The use of black and white is descriptive not racist. So we definitely disagree but I will try to use trash as stand alone, here.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by bnw.

zn wrote:

A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it’s like inside the family, and whether they could do it too.

A lot of this one, though, for a long time, came from the fact that east-Asian immigration to the USA was restricted, and those that tended to be allowed in were deliberately from the demographic of professionals with advanced degrees. So the immigration policy just pre-selected a demographic committed to those values. Asian-american scholars call this “the myth of the model minority.”

The myth was very different in the 20s when a lot of Japanese farm-laborers migrated. They tend to do well at farming, but that was because Japanese farming methods had to make the most out of hilly, less farm-friendly land, so they grew up around farming techniques that did that. When they came to the USA, they had the resources to make the most out of land that european-american types who were there before them didn’t know how to.
…

Interesting post. Good stuff!

I like the lack of ambiguity here unlike the gossip mill with Rosendope and his son and Georgia. At least Benson left zero doubt. BTW how stupid can his daughter and grandkids be?