As I thought, pure speculation. It's not about being optimal. It's about accessibility that does what needs to be done. Which Windows has successfully accomplished.
Bill Gates new initiative.
- Thread starter DEAD7
- Start date
As I thought, pure speculation. It's not about being optimal. It's about accessibility that does what needs to be done. Which Windows has successfully accomplished.
1- healthcare? The development of life saving drugs is driven by capitalism(and its greed mechanism). This ultimately benefits the world no?
Technological advances, such as those made by bill gates... have benefited the world no? Despite the "rent-seeking behavior" behind them...
The citizens of this capitalist nation are also the most giving and charitable, leading the world in philanthropy. <--- note citizens not govt. Our govt. is the most charitable as well, for what its worth.
Capitalism "makes self-interest serve the wider interest", the list goes on and on...
2- Most capitalist feel that those issues will resolve themselves over time, on their own. A claim that cant be called false, despite how distasteful it may be.
That said, the want to expedite this process is understandable
Slavery isnt a creation of capitalism, nor is it contingent on capitalism. The removal of slaves was actually(brace yourself) good for capitalism. Slavery despite what you think(or have been told rather) was not economically efficient.
The cotton gin >>>> slaves, and it took the end of slavery to bring it about....
Defending capitalism from attacks by people enjoying its fruits is tiring
capitalist nation leads the world,
socialist nations follow,
this must mean capitalism is unrealistic/broken and its socialism that's needed
I really dont get it.
Pretty sure you're wrong on this, from what I understand the cotton gin actually increased the need for slaves. It was not efficient to have people picking cotton (cotton gin was a better solution), but it was still efficient to have free labor to grow and harvest.
you mean the same guy that promotes genetically modified food and releasing genetically modified mosquitoes ........ wants to help the poor ...
I think your right
But the point is capitalism doesnt need slavery.
Its often insinuated, but your right. My bad.Nobody said that.
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Most people will never understand that science comes from profit-motivated people. They think scientists are some sort of benevolent non-human gods.
Im going to ignore the ridiculous monopoly claim. That whole case was nonsense.
But underlining your response is the concept of wealth as a reward for merit...Interesting. so there is a point where liberals begin to believe people should be paid what they are worth?
... and third parties should have to approve of how they made their money?
The monopoly claim isn't ridiculous, though. That issue gets to the heart of the kind of maneuvering that allowed Gates to sidestep any kind of innovation on his road to dominance.
As for wealth as merit- some of it, yes. My position is that everyone deserves a minimum standard of living, not that everyone has to have exactly the same income. The rest should be merit-based. Regardless, my position doesn't exclude judging some gains as ill-gotten, as in Gates's case. That kind of economic rent-seeking is not only ethically offensive to me, it also prevents growth and innovation. I'm not sure why that's surprising to you- nobody on earth thinks meritocracy is wrong. Even Marx didn't.
Just completely different perspectives.
I don't think anyone deserves anything other than equal opportunity(completely detached from the results), and I don't believe income should be viewed solely as reward for merit, cause it isn't.
Its interesting that your ideology has breakpoints(isn't constant)... meaning there is a point where meritocracy ends and a person needs to be paid what they need, and a point where a person couldn't merit that much.
Two points.
1. I agree with you re: equal opportunity. But that's exactly why I believe in my form of egalitarianism, since for me, equal opportunity entails the position of minimum guaranteed standard of living. It's impossible to separate the two unless opportunity is conceived narrowly, at which point it's not equal opportunity anymore. Truthfully, I don't even believe in generational wealth inheritance, which is profoundly anti-meritocratic (notice how there are people now who still live on slavery money, and hell, there are people now who are living on medieval lordly money... studies have been done on last names in Europe, and people with "peasant" names still have less money on average than people whose last names originated from medieval lordly houses in the 1400s, even though Capitalism supposedly freed us from feudalism) though that position could only be properly instituted in a society very different from ours and so doesn't factor too strongly into my more pragmatic, concrete positions about the present.
2. I lean towards opportunity more than results, obviously, but I don't think results can be ignored completely. The paradox we have to deal with is that equal opportunity will forever be in a dance with equal outcomes, and can be destroyed very easily through unequal results. One generation of starkly unequal outcomes is enough. That's why lazy bum #1 can be rich from inherited wealth while hardworking, intelligent person #2 starts from the bottom and never makes it, or is never even in a position where they might have made it. The way I want to deal with this is by limiting the possible disparity, which is probably where you disagree. Ideally, this would be done by destroying generational inheritance altogether, as I stated earlier, but more realistically, there are other things we can do in the present. When the richest make more than 1,000 times as much as the poorest, equal opportunity becomes nothing but an illusion used to cover up what is essentially feudalism, in politics (ie political dynasties like the Kennedys, Clintons, or Bush, which really are dynasties in a neo-feudal sense) in business, and everywhere else.
when the rich innovate and build more wealth...they improve everybody's potential and ability to move within and up economic classes...but i'm not sure a society can exist where there isn't someone who isn't at the bottom...but the bottom under capitalism is better than the majority being poor under cuban or soviet like communism
and Bill is trying to create a private initiative to improve wealth inefficiencies not forcing the government to take it inefficiently
and Bill is trying to create a private initiative to improve wealth inefficiencies not forcing the government to take it inefficiently
In society your always going to have those who are considered lower class.
It's the way you go about treating these people, either give them opportunities or let them starve.