I certainly don't deny that some people contribute to their own poverty through their own actions and inactions. That seems pretty obvious. But my main issue here is that the system relies on the distribution of wealth to be the way it is (most of the money belonging to a small minority). Unfortunately, if this ever changes, I think it can only be through evolutionary change, not revolutionary change.

Well if I never acknowledged it, it might be because it didn't seem relevant to me. The accrual of more total wealth through human ingenuity is just obvious - but seems pretty much unrelated to the issue of distribution of wealth to me. Except perhaps that it can be used on an individual basis for someone to climb their way 'up the ladder' of wealth to become one of the rich people instead of one of the poor people. That doesn't mean that someone else drops down a rung or whatever - certainly not in such explicit terms. The possibility of isolated individual cases (and indeed the existence of such cases - like Oprah who you have mentioned a few times) does not change the overall social reliance on a top heavy system of wealth distribution.

That sounds suspiciously like infinite inflation and/or, the 'let's print truckloads more money then we can all be better off' approach (if you can even call it an approach).

Mine is that is not so simple as that. There are individual causes, but there is also an institutional one. And there are also other factors that affect the situation which are a kind of cross between individual and institutional ones - like the mess in Zimbabwe.

If we can figure out a way to extend life expectancy, I don't see why not.

What on earth are you talking about? What system? The only people who are trying to control distribution of wealth are on the left. As much as the market is free, no one is controlling who is rich and who is poor. Who do you claim is doing this? Who operates this system and what controls do the put in place to make people poor despite their best efforts.


It is related because it demonstrates there are unlimited resources to generate wealth with. You seem to have been arguing there exists a zero sum economy where when one individual increases her wealth, some other individual must lose wealth.



Reliance by who? The possibilities I point out indicate there is no institutional or universal obstacle or mechanism that keeps people poor despite their best efforts.


No. Money is just representative - I'm talking about actual wealth. The more everyone produces, the more everyone has.

I work a day or two or whatever to earn enough to buy a video card. I work about half a second to earn enough for the water to keep me hydrated. That video card would be pretty much useless to me if I were stranded in the middle of a desert - I wouldn't work to keep it much less two days, but I would work two days to find water.

What I'm getting at is people generate wealth when they develop and produce what other people want and need. Thousands of years ago wealth was basically food, shelter, mate, and maybe fire. Now we need cell phones, movies, television, etc.

You can generate wealth out of nothing. Take AM radio in this country. 20 years ago, it was a dead end- there was no money in it. Now it generates huge amounts of revenue compared to a few decades ago.



You haven't been able to demonstrate a institutional cause that stands up to examination. What is it?

The mess in Zimbabwe has little or nothing to do with what you've been driving at. Their problems aren't based on a system where anyone can get as wealthy as they want.

I've been saying this the entire time. What I'm talking about is today, right now, in today's economy with today's technology and todays infrastructure. You cant magically become productive. In fact there is a very big problem with everyone being wealthy; the Earth, the actual planet, does not have enough energy for everyone to be driving cars and turning on lights. With solar / wind power yes everyone could drive electric cars and everything would be fine but right now the world is staring directly into a very sever global energy crisis, and this is a world where the average person has ~$8000 USD. The problem is that everyone in China and India are becoming more wealthy. They're driving cars and turning on lights just like everyone in the west.

If you want everyone to be wealthy it would have to be a gradual, evolutionary change. It's not something that could happen today or tomorrow. Everyone cant just get off their ass right now and become wealthy. The economy cannot expand to incorporate 6.5 billion multimillionaires. The economy right now is barely expanding at all. If you've ever studied economics you know that this is because we aren't meeting out energy demands quickly enough; the economy needs energy to grow. And you want the economy to grow by an order of 10^4? It cant happen. And hense we're stuck back at our old problem where we have an upper limit on how much money everyone can have. Until fundamentally society changes either through better technology or better energy management policies your world where everyone is a multimillionaire cant be realized.

I've never said anything about magic. No one ever generated wealth by magic, it was ingenuity, hard work, creativity, motivation, etc.

If you wish to change the subject, why don't you first concede that your previous point - that people who are wealthy need other people to be poor - is patently false.

We are talking about what anyone wants. We are talking about your assertion that someone has to be poor for someone else to be rich. Have you conceded that is a false position? If so, then you can start another thread about the energy problem or overpopulation or whatever.

OK, so now you think that capitalism isn't a system. Perhaps your view is different, but the existence of a system does not require that there be individuals controlling it. Although later in the same post I see you refer to it as a system yourself. Odd.

I'm getting tired of repeating myself on this issue ... you are very big on telling people to try reading the earlier posts. Maybe you need to try it yourself.

No they don't. This is getting repetitive, tiresome and silly ...

<rolls eyes, sighs, deletes rest of post quoted and retires from the thread>

Change the word "magically" to "suddenly" and it means the same thing. There's no reason to be childish about word choice.I was never making that statement. What I am saying is that in today's world everyone cant be rich because the economy simply cant accommodate 6.5 billion rich people. Your retort was, basically, that our economy is essentially unlimited and I pointed out that we need more energy for the economy to grow and that, in fact, we're already running into energy problems that are stagnating the economy.

You can even look at this from a simplistic perspective. How are 6.5 billion people going to drive cars and turn on lights? This is just the elimination of poverty we're talking about here which is far short of turning everyone into millionaires.Like I've been saying all along if we were living in the future everyone could be rich but in today's world it's simply not possible. You're running around in circles but you cant address what's right in front of you. In any maths, regardless of what it's being applied to, if you have a set of numbers a + b + c = d anytime a,b, or c increase the sum of the other two have to decrease. This has nothing to do with having people to flip your burgers at McDonalds (although kevmartin does have a point). In the future this could be automated or the burger flippers could make similar salaries to everyone else but, again, in today's world this is simply not possible.

Look at the real world and tell me everyone could get up tomorrow and start generating wealth and then, suddenly, everybody would be rich. You're an idealist. We can idealize about the future but if we're talking about the world as it exists today you have to get serious about how it works and stop pretending that somehow if everyone just "worked really hard" everyone would be rich. Seriously -- how do you plan to generate 10^4 * 80 million barrels of oil per day? Try as we might oil production has been stagnant for something like two years now despite all the money we've been poring into it; we're pretty much at our limit with 80 million per day.

You misunderstood. Capitalism doesn't rely on any type of distribution of wealth, it relies on protection of individual liberty and property rights. So long as those are protected you have a capitalist system regardless who has how much of what. It also is the best environment for people who have little to gain more provided they invest the effort.

The system that relies on controlling wealth is a communist or socialist system. This is where you see those in control limiting how much people can have. Of course the people in control eat caviar, send their kids to private schools in limosuines, etc, but that's another thread.



This is what you said, back in post 36 or so....

"For a start, I think societally as long as there are rich people, there necessarily have to be poor people."

You have not supported this statement or refuted my sound arguments against it. You went on to expand on that comment by saying in your next post:

"It is quite clear that wealth is gained through the exploitation of others."



Ok, I'm by no means wealthy now. Content, but not wealthy. Suppose next week a publisher pays me millions of dollars for a book I wrote. Now I'm wealthy. You say my wealth depends on someone being poor. Who? Who has to become poorer so I can earn the $5 million off my book?

I never said anything about suddenly either. What's childish is putting words in my mouth.



Yes you did. In post #40:

"So at least in today's world to have rich people you have to have poor people."

Again in post #54:

"Fact is to have rich people you have to have poor people."

And then in post #58 you even quoted Kevmartin's version of the statement:

"This is what I was discussing:"

Quote: Originally Posted by kevmartin
For a start, I think societally as long as there are rich people, there necessarily have to be poor people.

"Am I missing something here?"

You're so full of bullshit you can't even keep track of what you've said. Try just learning facts rather than ideologies that sound fashionable to your young, naive ears and you'll have an easier time remembering what you've said.

You just earned a week of detention. You will not be taken seriously for a week.

It does not, it has nothing to to with rights nor liberty.

In fact it's about making profit no matter what. Granting rights, granting liberty costs money. The magnetism of money ultimately leads to slavery.

Protecting rights, even if only a few, is already controlling the market. People work for free if you are allowed to whip them.

You're basically confusing capitalism with a political system.

About the wealth/people-ratio:

People often assume there is a growth of capital over the years, but it's decreasing. What's increasing is labour power. Both values are finite.

The only variable with significant growth however is the population.

I'm not trying to be mean, but you have no idea what you're talking about. Capitalism does rely on the protection of private property and individual liberties. Notice I wasn't necessarily defining capitalism, I was correcting another poster's mistaken notion about what capitalism relies on.

As an economic system, it is defined by free trade and private ownership of production and distribution. You can earn zero profits and still exist and do business in a capitalistic system.

Whipping people has not place in capitalism. If you are applying force or deception to make someone do something, that is not a free market - not free trade.

Under capitalism, the laws of supply and demand control the market.

Where capitalist principles have been applied and allowed to flourish, slavery has ended, there has been prosperity and advances in technology.

Where communist principles have been applied there have been people standing in line for bread, gulags, political prisons, mass murder, human rights abuses, starvation - basically just failure.

You win.

Quick! Tell the scholars!

Stop being childish and read / address what I've posted. You have to consider context here. I believe I have made this very clear in most of my posts. I even pointed out the burger flipping thing in my last post.

I not only addressed it, I copy/pasted your own words. You don't get out of it by saying something about context.