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Showing content with the highest reputation on 11/22/11 in all areas

  1. The subject is very important in the concept of objectivity. Not everything that takes into account the nature of the subject is subjectivism. He's just saying the concept of "order" applies from the point of view of human knowledge. We would not even be able to conceive a "disordered universe," since all that would mean is that A would be non-A. So the argument from design just doesn't get us to the necessity of an intelligent designer.
    1 point
  2. The self-contradictions of the Bible from Freespace (Timothy Sandefur's blog): "A cool poster. I remember my Greek professor in college telling me, rightly, that the only people who believe every word of the Bible are people who haven't read it." Following the "cool poster" link, there are links to two printable versions of the poster (PDF): 22” x 33” or 33” x 44”
    1 point
  3. FeatherFall

    Critique of Capitalism

    Boris, your equations seem to assume that the economy is a zero-sum game; that somehow you can put a ceiling on value. This assumption contradicts two facts of reality. The first is that humans are capable of adding value to existing resources (rearanging them, cutting out waste, finding new uses, etc.). The second is the law of comparative advantage. Some goods are actually worth more to some people. That's why people trade. Your equations might be true in an economy where the values of all goods were fixed for all people (edit: and the goods were fixed). That's not the world in which we live.
    1 point
  4. dream_weaver

    Critique of Capitalism

    More generally, in order for a businessman to create a profit, he has to sell his product at a price the the customer can afford, which simultaneously must be higher than the material/labor cost of producing it. The value of the product can exceed the cost of material/labor to produce it. While there may be other issues with your premises, this one, in particular, stands out to me.
    1 point
  5. rebelconservative

    Free Money

    I'm not going to psychoanalyse their motives, but the fact is that the dominant theme of our culture is one of altruism, one where a man is heralded as moral not for making millions but for giving money away. The businessman is not congratulated for providing a great product and service to consumers at a profit, but only when they "give back to society" (I hate that term). In our culture people receive psychological rewards when they give to other people, the rich man likely feels good about himself for giving money - less guilt about amassing riches beyond the imagination of the 99%. This is the culture in which the rich min finds himself, the culture that serves us trash like this from a business paper... http://www.businessweek.com/management/idolize-bill-gates-not-steve-jobs-11012011.html?campaign_id=rss_topStories If a rich man does not have a strong grounding in philosophy, he will very likely accept the moral message of the altruist, even though his life is testament to its impracticality. It is possible for a rich man to give away millions of dollars entirely rationally. I'm not just talking of rationally self-interested motives like funding research into diseases you may die of, but if you have more money than you could ever spend and if you value education, then supporting schools in Africa is entirely rational even though you won't directly benefit.
    1 point
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