Which I did? That’s what high reasoning, rationallity and logic are for. To evaluate, analyze and conclude, it’s very simple. Only people with low aforementioned intelligences, can only conclude when everything are spelled out, even then their basis of conclusion are poor, because they comprehend so little.
It’s a matter of mental aptitude.
Phyllo,
Givent that Meiji and Post-War Japan were highly centralized, I’m not sure that they can stand in support of free market style economies but even if we accept that at face value, all you have is the potential that market style capitalism is possibly better in one out of five cases. That still doesn’t really argue that Communism, as a system, was a complete failure (Hex’s assertion). Plus, Japan was already beating up on Russia during its Imperial stage so a head-start is still pretty visible in that case.
As for market forces, basically what OH said. The market stands as a reflection of our values and I am suggesting that currently our values are out-of-whack. And that isn’t even a Communist argument, it is a capitalist one. If a capitalist society favors fascilitators over producers the market will naturally generate more fascilitators than producers. Then you get a top-heavy system infested with parasites and the whole thing comes tumbling down.
Huh? You were better off living in Austria, Greece, Turkey or Japan than in the USSR. Communism is a complete failure. My parents lived under that oppression as did I. My personal opinion is that it sucks. I would never trade a democratic capitalist society in favor of communism. No comparison.
I’m not sure I follow. The best way to determine the temperature is with a thermometer, but the thermometer doesn’t tell us why it’s getting colder; that’s explained by someone leaving the door open, or a cold front coming in from the north.
I’m not sure about this. If I want to buy some Australian beer (why would I? OK, just humour me here) without any intermediaries it will cost me thousands of euros and four days’ travel minimum. The facilitator lowers the price for me, considerably. He raises it for the people who are within reasonable travelling distance.
Assuming your parents lived in the USSR proper and not a sat. state, you still seem to be discussing the virtues of living in those places as a function of something other than raw GDP. Those other values are important, but they don’t mean that the Soviet economic model is a failure.
You were closest to nailing me when you compared the projections of the USSR. See, because of their political power their GDP was inflated. If we separate political, personal, and economic policies you could argue that the economic policy of the USSR was a failure and we only observe it as being successful because of their political power. That would be a solid argument.
Not random anecdotal evidence based on a very small and highly emotional sample.
Chuang Tzu slept, dreamt he was a butterfly flying everywhere playfully. Weaking up, he didn’t know he had become the butterfly or the butterfly had become him.
Or we say, in Daoism, our minds and the world around us are one. Thus, I’m not superior to H.Hammer, but I see you are Dao, which has 2 sides nothingness & everythingness. Since I see H.Hammer is nothingness, I’m not superior to Hammer.I see me & the society are one.
One more example is HH & the sun are one as HH eat plants (bread), & plants photosynthetic with the Sun.
TAOIST:
Te followed
Anti-dualist
Oneness enlightened
Impermanent
Sincere
Treating others & enemies like myself.
I’ve been to Russia a couple of times, and if you want a big sample of anecdotal evidence it’s right there for the taking. You’re right, it’s principally based on factors other than economic success - living a police state dictatorship run by paranoid lunatics (who in turn become so because of the nature of the state) gets old pretty fast, I’d guess.
But the economy was fundamentally broken. The state apparatus was profoundly and perniciously corrupt, the (vast) black market was capitalism without any consumer protection run by real, proper, full-time criminals, and the exchange rate was artificially held an order of magnitude too high by insular (and harsh) laws. Total planned economies can’t work at that scale, certainly not with that technology. A couple of misjudged predictions, a politically-favourable fudge here or there, an unexpectedly bad summer and your maths goes wrong, and people start starving. The advantage of the free market is its inefficient robustness.
That’s not to say that American capitalism is the only alternative. A (say) Marxist description of capital may be spot-on in its diagnosis of capitalism’s problems (and highlighting of its benefits) without necessary entailing that the prescriptions following on from that are correct. I can say that a meal is bland and lacks texture, but you needn’t follow my advice to add a cup of salt and two of sawdust to rectify that. People who point to the USSR’s failure under Marxist-Leninism don’t use Russia as a shining beacon of the benefits of capitalism either; its failure doesn’t exonerate capitalism from critique, although US political thought in particular favours polarity and often sees it that way.
Ultimately though, I don’t think the problem as raised is even involved in the communism-capitalism question. That’s a matter of who has the power in society and how it changes, not which employees are valued and why. It’s a matter of industrialisation - the producers become more like, and are ultimately replaced by, machines, in the name of productivity and uniformity. So you have non-industrialisable jobs becoming relatively more valuable. Those within the industrial business (salesmen, managers, process engineers) get to partake in the profits of industry, those outside (artists, microbrewers, craftsmen) have to compete increasingly hard on above-uniform quality and higher prices.
Communism and capitalism alike favour industrialisation, although since capitalism is inherently more technology-driven and less conservative, I suspect it will win in otherwise equal direct competition.
I thought the explenation was already given from me, and was fully satisfying?
Don’t worry.
I’m not complaining about defending my arguments, it’s the complaint about explaining very basic and notorious things which only points to the quality of the officials. Through the entire thread you have misinterpeted everything I’v said and jumped to conclusions, and even now.
Unfortunaly other sites doesn’t have a “watch own topics button” thus I can’t see the progress of own debates, untill I find another site with such feature, I have to stay here.
C’mon people, somebody must know of one. Links please…
You really like to bring up some poetry, but I don’t see how this can solve anything specific. In any greater system you need very clear and specific rules and laws to guide people, if one only have some vague random good intended lines to go along, then chaos will rule all.
Why did you think that?
I don’t find it fully satisfying that we would regard psychological manipulators over producers of goods, unless we were psychologically manipulated to do so. If that’s the case, shouldn’t we counter that with our knowledge of psychology to prevent our further exploitation?
Unfortunately, I don’t know what you mean, I can only go on what you say. I can assure you that any misinterpretation isn’t intentionally done to annoy you, and I appreciate the difficulties of expressing subtleties and nuances in a second language. And while I can make allowances for language difficulties, I can’t make allowances for your impatience, as I can’t just decide to understand you better. And you seem prone to jump to conclusions too, so it’s not all a one-way problem.
Also, please bear in mind that what is basic to some people is complicated and nuanced to others not because they’re unfamiliar with it, but precisely because they have looked into it in more depth. For example, knowing what truth is is a basic requirement to seeking knowledge of it through philosophy, but there are some very complex and detailed arguments about what it really is. So if someone asks “what do you mean by ‘truth’?”, they’re not necessarily bumbling amateurs but they may be considering things you haven’t.
Looks like we’ve found a Key Marketing Differentiator 
But why do you have to stay here? You presumably come because you want to discuss things, and you’re unsatisfied with the discussions. I can’t imagine you want to come here just to watch topics that annoy you to participate in.
There isn’t rationallity in your assertion of the inherent values of the different parameters. It’s like a smoking woman that are more afraid of a little harmless mouse than her cancerous cigarette.
But I’m not asserting inherent values at all. These values are granted by society, not determined objectively, that is the point.
Let’s talk rationality: a mouse most likely can’t harm the woman as much as the cigarette potentially can. Would you say that a society is more likely to be adversely affected by a subsection psychologically manipulating the majority of the productive population in its own interest, than if this is not the case? Whether this subsection is politicians, journalists, advertisers, whatever.
Sorry I can’t discuss this, as you have just issued an unofficial warning for objectivly explaining the deeper psycological mechanics of your views, so I can’t engage in a further debate about this.
I sent you a PM regarding your report, that the other party had received an unofficial warning. Not you. Hence the subject line: Your report. Is this what you mean?
I have seen neither objective explanation nor deep psychological mechanics in your posts to me in this thread.
I’m actually not sure about anything anymore, however I think I’v presented all relevant things from my side to the discussion, and not seen any convincing arguments to contradict my belives, therefore I’ll just leave all of this.
You are the one who took this from ‘raw GDP’ into quality of life by referring to a ‘near doubling in life expectancy’, ’ massive increase in literacy’ and ’ incredible expansion of the economy’. You made these statements without any supporting evidence. If you had looked at the 1990 GDP per capita of your comparison nations (Austria, Greece and Turkey ) you would know that only Turkey had a worse GDP that the USSR.
I think that you are only interested in playing a game of arguments, rather than presenting your honest beliefs. “I will make this statement and then he should respond with that statement and if he doesn’t then I win.”
Do you honestly believe that a comparison between Austria, Greece, Turkey and the USSR was valid? Do you honestly believe that the USSR economy was not a failure?
The Australian beer is, in effect, unavailable to anyone who does not live within a short distance of the brewery. By using facilitators, the brewery makes then beer available to more people which actually lowers the price per bottle due to economies of scale. I think that the customer doesn’t see the economies of scale effect but he/she understands a ‘direct purchase’ versus a ‘retail purchase’ or wholesale versus retail. The customer understands that the merchant or retailer is making some profit on each bottle of beer sold. That’s an acceptable price to pay for the convenience of having the beer locally available at a reasonable price. The customer has not control over and does not know how much a merchant actually profits from the sale of beer. Depending on how many bottles are sold, merchant may well make more money than the brewmaster in the brewery. The merchant is contributing something valuable to the system. Is the money earned a correct reflection of the contribution to the economic system? Maybe it is. You say that without a producer there would be no product and nothing to sell. But without the salesperson, the product would only be available to a few customers at a high price. The salesperson lowers the cost and allows many more customers to benefit.
H.Hammer,
Taoism is private freedom. We can’t enlighten the whole country. He who eats is full, not one eats but others full. He who practises Taoism may be enlightened, not others. So I don’t have a system to “save” the world.
You wanna see a logical work, logical world but I see the world is chaotic. For example, China wanna to be the most powerful of the world, not only US, so they are partly hostile to US. They can’t progress well because of US. The world is not totally happy since 900M (1/7 of Earth population) are in famine. 95% of weapon are produced by 5 most powerful countries: US, Russia,France, England, China. That’s hypocrisy.
Now we discuss Taoism:
As we know, Dao, the chaos of yin and yang is the essence of the world. But why are things so multiform ? That is because of De (Te). In Daoism, De is what nature or Dao give to things, people. For example, fire is Dao, its De is hot and bright. Water is Dao, its De is flexible and is good solvent for many substances. A magnet is Dao, its De is attracting iron. Each individual has his own De, i.e, his own things innate, his own talent, his own natual endowments, his own tastes. It is impossible that things don’t do so is what we call De. For example, fire is bright naturally; it must do so; things which are not bright are not fire. A magnet must attracts iron; if it doesn’t, it is not a magnet. De is what things get from Dao, what man gets from Dao, or nature. Say it another words, De is Dao manifests in each man, each thing. Dao and De, although different names, are oneness in a thing, in an individual. Thus, the world is one, not many. Things, phenomenons, humankind, although numerous, multiform, but all are Dao. In change, there is unchange, there is oneness lasting forever, and constant. But remember this: De does not make things, phenomenons, people become good or bad, or not become yin or yang. For instance, a magnet attracts iron , but this is not good nor bad. Magnets rotates and produce electricity. Electricity is used to run radio, TV, computer, telephone, cell phone, etc… sounds good. But without electricity, Hitler could not produce a great deal of weapons using to kill millions of people in the world war II, or say it another words, electrictiy, or magnets are not good nor bad, or they are nothingness.
Based on Dao and De, how does a Daoist act ? As we disscussed above, we can’t do the bad: the society punish us, but if we do the good, this means we do the bad. As a result, Daoism suggests wu wei. In Vietnamese, it is called “vo vi” which means “doing nothing” literally. Actually, wu wei doesn’t mean so. It has four meanings:
However, wu wei is hard to practise to ordinary people. Ordinary people love the good, hate the bad or love the bad, hate the good. Persons enlightened in Daoism wu wei naturally, never reluctantly as they see goodness and badness are nothingness, so they don’t interfere others. He is not the good, therefore he doesn’t killl the bad. He is also not the bad, therefore, he does not do badness. Wu wei is not doing nothing, but is to follow Dao, follow the nature, follow world’s laws, follow the law all are nothingness.
This chapter is the most abstract of the book. I don’t want so, but I have to. And Dao is the practical life, therefore I would like to be realistic by telling you readers an example of Wu Wei, for you to see how a Daoist act in real life like you see … bread. For instance, if in a couple, the wife, as she misunderstands the husband, wants to divorce him, what does he do to practise Wu Wei ? When getting married, the husband thought that because of happiness, they married. Now, also because of her happiness, she leaves. OK, leave me. But he is not unhappy, because if he is an Taoist, his mind is nothingness. Though he tries the best, he still does not feel unhappy, like the Zen master Hakuin in the preface above. Since he is not unhappy, he doesn’t hate the wife. Then he waits for several months, several years and observes the wife. During that time, as he is balanced, he doesn’t make any scandal and he works well to make sure he may supply money for the family. He prepares well for the family, then asks the wife:”Hey, darling, come back?” If the wife says “yes”, they live together again. In both cases, leaving him and come back to him, all are ok, peaceful,since all are for happiness.He never feels reluctant. Leaving or coming back all are ok.That is Wu Wei.
Wu Wei sounds “new” and very different from normal persons’ solutions. A couple of my folks have been divorced for decades but they are now still reproaching with each other. I often hear the first wife curses the second wife “the mare” and I smile, thinking to myself “Oh, God! Being stuck with dualisms, she can’t go beyond the misery. But I give you this book, discussing the truth, leaving all misery far from you, but you think that I am young and inexperienced (she is 17 years older than me), you don’t need to read mine. All life you hurt but I can not help you although I have the best solution here.”
After discussing the truth, we go to the section how a Daoist is like in real life; how he applies Dao in everyday like, and how is his inner world like. The key point is how Dao affects a man in real life.
Dear taoist11 I’m so overwhelmed by your infinitive wisdom, that I tremble and are but a humble western ignorent that will seek solitude from what I am not worthy of knowing, therefore I’ll will permanently prevent myself from defiling your wisdom by accidently give any future unworthy answers.