Karl

Interesting article about the black economy in North Korea-exactly the same phenomenon kept the USSR going well beyond its collapse point. Of course maybe you say this US propaganda, so you should cross correlate with as many sources as possible. http://edition.cnn.com/2009/BUSINESS/07/14/north.korea.capitalism/index.html?eref=edition

If you won't listen to me. I suggest you listen to someone who escaped North Korea. There is a famous essay by an ex socialist academic ( can't lay my hands on it), but it was aimed at western intellectuals who praised the USSR. It was called 'what did you know and when did you know it'. It's explicit in showing the intellectual blind eye turning to the horrors of socialism. It asks the guilty by one who feels terrible remorse for his own support of evil.

Oh yes, absolutely sure what she means. It's worth being raped if it prevents racism. Funnily enough, we now have two other threads that hammer on this exact same theme. If you have an eye for it, it's everywhere.

That's not an argument I make. I don't think socialists are 'jealous' of anything. Socialists hate themselves first and last. Socialism is an externalised manifestation of ones own self hatred and loathing. That's why I said "They hate the good for being the good". Socialists want to suffer and, by all means they should go ahead, but don't drag anyone else into your self destructive, self sacrificial ideology. Don't cover it with pretty flowers, hippy culture and love in order to make a slow, torturous death more appealing to those who have not yet the critical faculties to reject it. The USA is losing its wealth, it is in debt because it failed to adhere to laissez faire capitalism and a Government that should only protect the freedom of the people in the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. Instead, they began to reinstall a more despotic version of the English class system and began eroding the core principles that had made their country so wealthy. They did not achieve their rapid expansion prior to the First World War by any kind of imperialism-that came from the era of Woodrow Wilson. Once the USA began empire building its debts began to grow and its production declined. Like most of the West it has a mixed economy which is shorthand for a self destructive, centralised fascist/socialist ideology. How to maintain true laissez faire capitalism and limited Government-well that's another question. That is works and works well is beyond historical doubt.

Shanlung you are one crazy dude. The Cat Ken Hom.

Exactly. Ironically this is what objectivists get accused of because of the term rational selfishness (something diametrically opposed to Kantianism). Yet, it is clear that Kant and his followers are saying entirely the opposite. Not only that one should remove ones desires, values and emotions, but that you should not profit from them in anyway what so ever. What is that but personal sacrifice to some greater good to which one cannot discern except by sacrifice. Sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice. He didn't destroy reason he removed it entirely as far as objectivist philosophy is concerned. How can you love anyone or anything ? You must not love because you desire the person, or because your personal values are similar, or because of your emotions. You must do the opposite said Kant. If you feel any of those things then you are not applying reason correctly. You must love someone because you don't love them, because you feel nothing at all for them and care nothing for theirs, or your values. So yes, we must agree to disagree. Not on the aims of Kant. On that we now agree, but on his entire philosophy which is one of death.

I would love another cat, but after we lost one and the other died of cancer (contracted through street fighting) I no longer thought it was good practice to let them wander the streets, my wife felt it was cruel to keep them indoors. Then we got used to going on holidays without homing them and the reduced cost of food and vets made itself obvious in our budget.

Who doesn't like the sentiment ? It sounds fantastic. I was attracted to it when I was younger and was an active campaigner for equality for everyone. I disliked money and capitalism with a passion and wanted everything nationalised. Our entire family were socialists, we hated Thatcher and always voted Labour. Hell, I definitely know how seductive it can be. Those profit taking bosses and us poor workers. Heck, I worked in a factory where the canteen was divided so that us scruffy oiks didn't upset the white collar bosses. I have too much time on my hands ;-) I really knew nowt until I packed in my job 4 years ago and then caught up. They only work hand in hand for a while. That's the point. Eventually they must and do fail. The crony capitalists that make it all work get too greedy, the state gets too ambitious, then the production cannot support the burden and gets increasingly sick until it just quits like a knackered horse pulling an enormous cart up a steepening hill. The entire world today is an example of the hybrid failing. The US has 20 trillion dollars of public debt.....let me say that again because the number really doesn't sink in 20 trillion 20 000 000 000 000. That doesn't include private debt, including company debt from stock buy backs, mergers, malinvestment in oil, housing, inventory, shipping. It doesn't take into account a big bubbly dollar either, because, should that crash then the world is in serious do dah. A quick visit to Japan with its NIRP, a collapsing Europe, exploding China, crashing Canada. That's what a socialised welfare system, backed by cronyism has achieved. Greece should be a warning as to why it can't work. They burned a touch brighter on the socialist front and collapsed more quickly.

Oh dear me. It's socialism that is rooted in hatred. It is hatred of the good because it's the good. What don't you get about all those millions upon million killed by Stalin, what about the abject poverty compared to the capitalistic West ? Do you honestly think it failed because it was badly implemented after all those numerous purges, death squads, KGB, doctored books, films and art ? Wake up and smell the blood and the stench of poverty. Where is the love ? None, nil. Death and misery, sacrifice and duty are all that lives in that dark, evil hell. What socialism promises it cannot deliver. The philosophy that underpins it is anti-life. It should be added that Western capitalism isn't really capitalism at all, it's a hybrid of fascistic big business cronyism, some semblance of demeaned laissez faire and a big slab of socialistic welfare wealth distribution. It's still better than pure communism, but it isn't capitalism as such.

That final line crystallises what I have been saying. It divorces values, emotion, desire from reason. As such, his duty centred moral law is based on reason alone, as if that was disconnected entirely from human values. How does Kant then say we should determine moral action, by which code ? Where did this code arise ? It manifested. Kant threw out knowledge and replaced it with faith. Ethics according to Kant does not arise from our experience, our desires are superfluous and we must act against any sense of them. Kant is a nasty, viscious sadist. Kants moral law is one in which every bit of desire, pleasure or happiness are subservient. A person must deny and suffer to be moral according to Kant. Have faith in duty says Kant. If you are suffering, you feel no pleasure in action then you are on the right moral road and performing your duty adequately. If you are well enough read of Kant then you will have some inkling of his moral law, its origin and the way he advises following it.

Socialism is always and everywhere a failure. There isn't any point in trying to argue differently. Whatever you think the US is doing, it pales into insignificance when a country runs into the arms of full on socialism. No matter how bad the USA is, no matter how bad State backed US banks are, it is not them that are wrecking the Venezuelan economy, it's the direction of travel of the politics. No property rights=no wealth. Economic armageddon. Always was, always will be.

Not 'making other people happy' but to avoid any form of happiness yourself. This was the premise of his individual rationality. In other words it's self sacrifice to 'the good', or as we say today 'the common good' which is collectivism. That's why I said it was a carefully planned misconstruing of reason levered towards the collective good and away from individual satisfaction. That's why duty was on his list of virtues. What has to be interpreted is 'how' can one 'dare to be wise (and think for oneself)' by zeroing in on 'the good'. How does Kant suggest we determine what 'the good' actually is ? Does he say 'let reason guide you to happiness'? No he certainly does not. Completely the opposite.

You see in her comment all that is wrong with current philosophy. It boils down to self sacrifice to a multiculturist ideology, or more succincly collectivism.

Most of the population at this point.

Once socialism is introduced it's the beginning of the end. That's what Venezuela did. Nationalisation-trampling over property rights then stealing and distributing what was never fairly earned. Fastest elevator to disaster.

She prefers crime to opinion. What a topsy turvy world we inhabit when someone would prefer to be stabbed than to discuss the merits of knives.

To lash reason to duty and thus duty to self sacrifice. He inverted the rational self seeking of individual happiness, to that of seeking happiness through duty to the collective. It subverted the individual to the collective. That man should utilise reason to be his brothers keeper and to take no pleasure in anything-because pleasure-as we know from the preacher man-equals sin. He attempted to throw man back into the dark ages to preserve religious mysticism and piety. Those that stand on the pulpit and tell others they must sacrifice and deny themselves happiness, are wicked, evil men with a lust for control. He preached anti-life and knew it. From his philosophy came the destructive March of the Jack boot and the murderous purges of Russia. He didn't destroy reason, but he most certainly perverted it.

He fed the poison to the tree of reason, others made sure that poison was delivered in sufficient quantities to kill it. It was his denial of conscious identity and the change from objective to collective reason that began the rot. Hegel delivered the coup de grace.

Cat-o-holic The religion of Cat

Scientism. It's all the rage. Complete and utter bollox of Quantum physics which is, as you say formed a mystical philosophy (which is a religion). It's been transferred into more and more mysticism in many areas once the preserve of real science. The science method of reason was given a hatchet job because people fail to see the importance of philosophy which provides the tools and framework for scientific work. It's become all about the numbers in a vacuum. These are the Mystics of muscle. If we don't pull ourselves out of this death glide then man will be back at the dawn of time applying complex numerology to every aspect of our lives, just as we once looked to the Gods. This paradigm shift is underway. The environmentalists and their global warming models have become a modern version of the oracle of Delphi. High priests of higher maths integrating human action and consciousness into a picture of the universe. This is the inevitable result of Kant/Hegel. It has destroyed reason in our education system and is turning the West into idiots which are confined to silos of knowledge funded by tax payers. When you dumb down the country, you dumb down the scientists who will work in ever narrower confines. Instead of inventors and polymath we get analysts.

I respect that. As to bug crushing. Well, if I am I am. :-)

Ive never heard that before. The Clapton version, that absolutely is Dave Gilmours Pink Floyd sound is it not ? It sounds like Wish You were here and Comfortably Numb and DSOTM.

Uh huh. ;-) Well I will refrain from disparaging your supernatural powers of prescience.

New Age fruit loop. NWO, Nietzsche superman stuff and nonsense. Get thee behind me Clinton and Gore. Humanist, Darwinism that should have been stamped out with the ending of the Nazis. He combined it with the Eastern Dharma to bring it to a new group of potential converts. Grab a bit of the old, blend it with the popular new and hey ho, the same old crap marketed under a new brand name. That's just my reading of it of course.

Not exactly what I meant re first para. Leave that for now. As for your Mum. Can you answer what has changed-obviously she has dementia-but fundamentally something has shifted in your feelings towards her ? This isn't a psyche type thing I'm getting at, but the identification of what underlies it. Objectivist philosophy can answer that very precisely. With Hitler it's different isn't it ? I mean that I can have compassion about your situation with your mum-I can empathise and feel a certain sadness at the predicament because ultimately it is grief but without being able to grieve for one who is still alive. Mum has gone and what is left is a body shaped like Mum, with the mannerisms and voice of Mum, but little else. With Hitler it's possible to empathise as well, but only from the perspective of yourself as him, which is then, not really anything at all. I certainly don't intend to go around crushing anyone, unless they are intent on doing me harm :-) I like to learn from others about their world even if I don't understand or agree.