Political Ethics for Taoists and Buddhists

[Vmarco]

Do Tea Party persons consider what the implications are of a smaller government? Most likely not. Smaller government leads to more power being concentrated in the hands of fewer government officials. The Tea Bagger wet dream is to privatize more government services to predatory corporations that are only accountable to themselves. Neofeudalism and neoliberalism are the only outcomes of such a single minded ideology.

 

I doubt any Taoist would advocate the fusion of government and predatory corporations.

 

Excellent viewpoints Ralis.

 

JoeBlast quips, if the government stops spending money at such ridiculous paces

 

Well Joe,...if the Tea Party could refrain from initiation so many intrusive new laws against women, LGBT's, Freethinkers, minorities, etc,...like the over 40,000 new laws in 2012,...perhaps we could spend less. If Tea Party congress people would spend less time the Tea Party's intrusive social agendas, and obstructing progress, perhaps we would be spending more wisely.

 

The Gettysburg address contains 256 words, while the Government regulation on the consistency of ketchup is said to be more than 70,000 words. At least sometimes, great things may be said in few words. By the way, "Mr Lincoln was not a Christian" Mary Todd Lincoln.

 

Anyway, the Tea Party, over the last two years, have clearly shown their Christocratic fascist reactionary roots. I agree with Ralis,...less government means more Vulture Capitalism,...which will, I assure you, lead to Civil striff on an unfathomable scale.

 

thelerner quips, We don't have the money- is the most powerful one. Yes there are wonderful things we can do, but we don't have the money

 

There is nothing real about money,...LOL,...you mention it as Christians talk about god. Money is an invention.

http://hermetic.com/bey/millennium/religion.html

 

Throw your money away thelerner,...like these people @ 2:33:00

 

If you want a free, prosperous World that respects the Tao, end the Abrahamic religions.

 

V

Edited June 6, 2012 by Vmarco

[ralis]

The Tea Party right wing Republicans are absolutely obsessed with money and more money!!! Ebenezer Scrooge is their resident deity. I always thought Taoists and Buddhists were working on shedding attachments from impermanent objects.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 6, 2012 by ralis

[Mark Foote]

Well, the Chinese control 97% of the rare earths, and their government subsidizes a whole infrastructure of manufacturing and engineering to take advantage of the fact. Apple moved the manufacturing to China where the labor is cheap and the engineers are right next door to the factory 24/7, and Apple found a way to funnel their company money through a 10-person office in Reno to avoid California taxes.

 

I think there was a surplus when Clinton left office. Not that he did the country a lot of good, getting rid of the restrictions on banks engaging in hedge funds and other gambling schemes.

 

The real stuff of revolution is ordinary fun, I believe in that; is that Taoist?

[joeblast]

Well, the Chinese control 97% of the rare earths, and their government subsidizes a whole infrastructure of manufacturing and engineering to take advantage of the fact. Apple moved the manufacturing to China where the labor is cheap and the engineers are right next door to the factory 24/7, and Apple found a way to funnel their company money through a 10-person office in Reno to avoid California taxes.

 

I think there was a surplus when Clinton left office. Not that he did the country a lot of good, getting rid of the restrictions on banks engaging in hedge funds and other gambling schemes.

 

The real stuff of revolution is ordinary fun, I believe in that; is that Taoist?

China has its own set of problems, it will realize the folly of the concept of a "complete command-control economy"...they will feel the pain resultant of their choices just as the us and Europe will.

 

Google the myth of the Clinton surplus, all that supposed "surplus" was but playing with numbers just like many other figures are number games. If Clinton never had the dotcom surge he wouldnta looked half as good as he did...and that's not even getting into the other ways the legacy was minded over.

 

as to businesses running off elsewhere where things are cheaper, one might ask why they ran away in the first place. Being all things to all people gets prohibitively expensive, as evidenced by the business, capital, and people-flight from cali. Politicians have pandered to unions and now can't pay all of the generous promises and at the same time maintain the social hammock.

 

(amusing that when people in Wisconsin were given the choice of union membership where it was no longer "if you are to have this job you *must* be a member of the union" then membership dropped from 65k some odd down to about 22k. But ralis calls that simply being anti union, whereas others would simply call that being given a choice!)

 

I'm sure we each feel that we ourselves are our own best arbiter of our own resource usage...each thing the gov does.lessens that amount. A certain amount is necessary or beneficial - go too far beyond that and it makes the uphill battle for the average person that much tougher.

[Brian]

Something that has largely been missing from this discussion, I think (IIRC ) is the concept of the transfer of energy. Many natural processes have the transfer of energy as a central tenet (with the underlying conservation laws as a backdrop) and this includes most human activities & interactions (we are really part of nature, remember, even if some of the species are in denial...)

 

People either use their energy for their own benefit in a rather direct fashion (like building your own shelter and growing your own food) or they trade their energy (or the results of their energy) to others in exchange for the fruits of someone else's labor. If this trade is done exclusively on a one-to-one basis, each individual has to find willing trade partners who simultaneously have something they want and want something they have. This is where money comes into the picture -- by a group of people deciding on an arbitrary trade medium against which the relative "value" of energy exchanges can be brokered, the "energy value" is abstracted one level and the need to find individual trading partners is relaxed.

 

The real question becomes "does an individual 'own' their energy and by extension the results of their labor?" Once that question has been answered, the issues of governance and monetary policy can be discussed in a rational fashion.

[Enishi]

[jeshopk]

I think if the Old Man was around today he'd either ignore politics or get in his car and head for the mountains.

 

Yes, I tend to agree. The premise of the Tao Te Ching is not that he really wanted to advise politicians, but that he was stopped as he was leaving to write his wisdom down for politicians. If you follow the advice to its conclusions, it would mean:

no forced association between strangers

no forced taxation

no forced conscription

no retributive justice

spontaneous conflict resolution without a standing army

 

What could even the smallest government hope to achieve, with the initiation of force being the base requirement for affiliation with a state? Lines on a map are illusions.