BROOKLYN, N.Y. (PIX11) â In response to the growing migrant crisis, the City of New York is officially commandeering popular park recreation centers. At least two have been partially taken ovâŠ
Iâm here because I like talking with people I disagree with
I think youâre looking for some kind of political debate forum. I canât speak for the moderator or anyone else here, but coming from reddit I expect this to be a place for conservatives to come together and build upon a shared perspective of the world.
None of the above monopoly strategies involve government regulation.
Completely false. Walmart and Amazon are both Delaware corporations, which means theyâre governed by Delawareâs particular corporate law. Both are publicly held, which additionally obligates them to follow the strict rules of the SEC, including quarterly earnings reports. Moreover federal international trade agreements and laws regarding imports and exports, including tax laws, deeply impact both Walmart and Amazon. A proper reply would be book-length, but suffice it to say every single decision made at Walmart and Amazon are deeply entwined with government regulations.
We cannot have freedom if corporations control everything, which they basically do.
Corporations are people. They are literally people. Have you never worked in a corporation? Theyâre not some kind of mythical beast. Theyâre just every-day Americans working for a living.
Not everybody can start their own company. That takes thousands of dollars, a lot of luck, and a lot of business skills.
Hogwash. You can do it with less than $1 and entrepreneurial spirit. There are so many rags-to-riches stories that define our blessed country, and more appear every day. It sounds like youâre just not trying hard enough. Maybe you donât want it bad enough. And if so thatâs fine, but donât pretend itâs impossible.
If a slave can choose their slave owner, but is still a slave, then they are still a slave.
You have absolutely no clue what slavery is. Thatâs bizarre. Normal commercial life in a free market is about as far away from slavery as possible. You can become a billionaire or a beach bum, or anything in between. Itâs completely up to you, and nobodyâs going to come around and whip you to death if you donât get back to work.
when they are stepping on your neck
What on earth are you talking about? You sound like youâve never had a real job, but youâve spent years reading Marx. This is delusional.
I assumed you were talking about Robinson v California being a mistake, and that we should indeed punish addicts for being addicts. Perhaps I have misunderstood.
Secularism is the lifeblood of our country and modern, developed nations. Without it we would have a whole extra level of oppression to deal with on top of the existing stuff.
Wow, no. What? Secularism is the lifeblood of depraved satanists who are diligently working to destroy everything we hold dear. Through Christ alone can we receive freedom from sin, and indeed the entire purpose of American freedom is to worship God and do His will. Oppression happens when we lack that freedom. You have it precisely backwards.
Do you have any scientific evidence to verify this?
Well, a web search turned up this as the first result:
[âŠ], we conclude that the value of faith-oriented approaches to substance abuse prevention and recovery is indisputable. And, by extension, we also conclude that the decline in religious affiliation in the USA is not only a concern for religious organizations but constitutes a national health concern.
I havenât read that whole study, and I donât know their methodology, so they may well cite an efficacy below 100%. Personally I arrive at 100% by deduction: those who are saved evidence their salvation by being shielded from temptation to abuse drugs, while anyone lacking that evidence is clearly not yet saved.
Whatever the methodology, though, claiming that âtheir success rate is no better than chanceâ is a lie based on a downright anti-Christian bias.
I would suspect it is instead because proselytizing to people who are not in a healthy state of mind and are vulnerable is not an ethical solution, and so medical professionals generally avoid it.
It is the sick who need a physician. Medical professionals (like most other people) generally avoid proselytizing to everyone under all professional circumstances.
Well, a web search turned up this as the first result:
Thatâs a meta study, and the only study they cite which mentions any control group only controls for depression. None of that controls for community engagement/health/connections, which is what I argue is the true problem. I would need better evidence than this.
Not only that, but it seems that this study at best only establishes correlation, not causation, nor the direction of causation.
Personally I arrive at 100% by deduction
The study you cited only lists a 33% change in drug use:
âIn their study, Chen and VanderWeele (2018) found that people who attended religious services at least weekly in childhood and adolescence were 33% less likely to use illegal drugs.â
Now it has been a while since my last statistics class, so I donât recall the exact methodology to determine likelyhood of causality between these two lines, however just from a quick glance these two rates seem to have a low/medium correlation. They wander closer and farther apart over the 20 years of this graph, and it seems that the drug death rate precedes the religious affiliation rate, which is the reverse of what we would expect if religious affiliation was causing drug deaths.
This all has made me curious enough to do some napkin math myself. Now this is incredibly terrible methodology, but if what you say is true then it should be apparent. I charted countries by irreligiosity, christianity, and drug use, and it doesnât look like there is any correlation:
This is a graph of irreligiosity vs drug use. There isnât much of a correlation here if any. If being an atheist/agnostic/none/etc made you more likely to be a drug user, we should expect a nice smooth rise in drug use correlated with atheism. But thatâs not what happens here in this chart.
This chart is basically the same thing, but ordered by how christian each country is. If christianity/Jesus/god was anywhere close to 100% efficicacy against drug use, we should expect to see a similarly nice smooth graph, correlating drug use inversely with christianity. But thatâs also not what happens here.
So if youâre right, that it is a 100% rate, if your deduction is correct, then why donât we see trends that support that?
Whatever the methodology, though, claiming that âtheir success rate is no better than chanceâ is a lie based on a downright anti-Christian bias.
I definitely have an anti-christian bias, and I will readily admit that. However it isnât a lie, nor is it based on my bias. If I recall there was a leaked report from AA floating around somewhere online from AA, they did a study to see how effective their program was, and discovered it was no better than chance. Iâll see if I can find it another time when I get the chance. For now this has already been a lot to compile, especially the two charts I made.
None of that controls for community engagement/health/connections, which is what I argue is the true problem. I would need better evidence than this.
Not only that, but it seems that this study at best only establishes correlation, not causation, nor the direction of causation.
The study you cited only lists a 33% change in drug use:
âIn their study, Chen and VanderWeele (2018) found that people who attended religious services at least weekly in childhood and adolescence were 33% less likely to use illegal drugs.â
Once again, we seem to be talking past each other. That 33% does not apply to what I meant.
Iâll try to explain more clearly.
A drug abuser is someone who does not understand that their body is meant to be the temple of the Holy Spirit.
The attendance of religious services is not a condition of salvation.
To be saved, one must accept Christ Jesus as Lord and Savior, and repent.
Once saved, and born again, oneâs behavior exhibits noticeable changes.
One such change resulting from salvation is usually a desire to attend religious services.
Another such change resulting from salvation is the view of oneâs body as the temple of the Holy Spirit, not to be polluted with drugs.
Another such change resulting from salvation is the ability to pray to Jesus that we may be shielded from temptation, so if one is tempted to sin with drug abuse, that temptation may be overcome through prayer.
So if youâre right, that it is a 100% rate, if your deduction is correct, then why donât we see trends that support that?
Thank you for your charts and your deductions. I appreciate your effort to communicate those ideas.
The point that I was trying to make, though, when I claimed 100% efficacy, is that self-reported religious affiliation is not important, but rather what is important is salvation. 100% of those saved are able to successfully pray to be shielded from temptation to sin, and are thereby able to overcome their drug addictions. Anyone who claims a religious affiliation but is unable to kick their nasty drug habit has clearly not yet been saved. This is how we can deduce 100% as a priori knowledge.
I definitely have an anti-christian bias, and I will readily admit that.
Thank you for admitting bias! I wish that was commonplace. I might just go update my profile with a list of self-admitted biases, if I can manage to produce a list of them all.
However it isnât a lie, nor is it based on my bias. If I recall there was a leaked report from AA floating around somewhere online from AA, they did a study to see how effective their program was, and discovered it was no better than chance.
Iâll read it if you find it, but I donât think it could convince me that legitimate salvation has anything less than 100% efficacy. Their methodology must have been testing for something else.
The point that I was trying to make, though, when I claimed 100% efficacy, is that self-reported religious affiliation is not important, but rather what is important is salvation.
And salvation rates would presumably be tied to religious affiliation rates. A country with 0 christians will have 0 saved people, and a country with n christians will have n * (unknown multiplier) saved people. Does that make sense?
If so you can understand that these charts should still show the effect.
I might just go update my profile with a list of self-admitted biases, if I can manage to produce a list of them all.
I could help you with that if you like lol.
Iâll read it if you find it, but I donât think it could convince me that legitimate salvation has anything less than 100% efficacy. Their methodology must have been testing for something else.
If I recall, it was simply looking at recidivism rates for members of AA.
And salvation rates would presumably be tied to religious affiliation rates.
Not necessarily. Churches have struggled to retain members for various reasons. A Christian may feel disaffected of his local denominational institution, while maintaining absolute loyalty to God. The two rates are loosely related for sure, but itâs a Venn diagram.
A country with 0 christians will have 0 saved people, and a country with n christians will have n * (unknown multiplier) saved people. Does that make sense?
I suppose it depends on how you define âChristianâ, but the standard definition is equivalent to âone who has been savedâ, so the multiplier is 1. But religious affiliation is a separate issue.
The two rates are loosely related for sure, but itâs a Venn diagram.
Iâm not stating that they should be directly tied to one another, but surely it would be related enough to see an effect on drug rates, but we do not.
I suppose it depends on how you define âChristianâ, but the standard definition is equivalent to âone who has been savedâ, so the multiplier is 1. But religious affiliation is a separate issue.
Even with your definition of âChristianâ the same math should apply.
(0) = (0)
(n) âchristiansâ = (n * x) true christians
Iâm sure X would vary from country to country, but you simply cannot have many âtrue christiansâ, whatever they may be that fit your definition, without lots of other âsuperficialâ christians.
I would reply to the other two messages you sent to my lemmy.world account, but that instance is down at the moment due to the ddos attacks, so Iâll respond to those at another time.
It matters because if âtrue christianâ population is correlated with self reported christian population, which it should be, then self reported christian population should also be inversely correlated with drug addicition.
I also needed to split this up, so this is part 1.
I think youâre looking for some kind of political debate forum.
I find such forums to usually be low quality, but thatâs just my opinion.
Walmart and Amazon are both Delaware corporations, which means theyâre governed by Delawareâs particular corporate law. Both are publicly held, which additionally obligates them to follow the strict rules of the SEC
every single decision made at Walmart and Amazon are deeply entwined with government regulations.
While true, that doesnât change anything. Corporations can still be monopolies while being legal if the law is insufficient to prevent natural monopolies.
Corporations are people. They are literally people.
Corporations are organizations of people. But regardless of what you define them as, people or organizations, you cannot have freedom if corporations control everything. Just as a dictator (person) prevents freedom, so too can companies (people).
Hogwash. You can do it with less than $1 and entrepreneurial spirit.
You can definitely do that but your chances of success are not high.
There are so many rags-to-riches stories that define our blessed country
And those stories have the same chances of winning the lottery. Sure people win the lottery all the time, but that doesnât mean everyone will.
Maybe you donât want it bad enough. And if so thatâs fine, but donât pretend itâs impossible.
Iâm not pretending itâs impossible. I am stating the fact that it is unreasonable for everybody to just create a new business and live in la la land. Sometimes fantasies come true, but they donât always.
You have absolutely no clue what slavery is.
I am using hyperbole. I am not stating that what we experience in America is literal chattel slavery. The point is that you canât just move to a different job to escape abuse when basically all american jobs are abusive. You canât just have freedom against buying from walmart when walmart is the only store within a 4hr drive. Does that clarify where I am coming from better?
What on earth are you talking about? You sound like youâve never had a real job, but youâve spent years reading Marx. This is delusional.
I am talking about how jobs control when you work, how you work, what you say, what you do. They control the law, politicians, what we buy, how we buy it. They control the media and therefore the narrative. Corporations have such an immense control over american life. We are not ranked number one in the world freedom index for a reason, we arenât actually even in the top 10. The top 10 is mostly comprised of European countries.
And Iâm not going to address the âreal jobâ part because that is a true scottsman fallacy waiting to happen. I will tell you this, I have never read Marx, I do not label myself a marxists, and I have had several jobs over the years at this point.
The two relevant cases are Engel v. Vitale (1962) and Abington School District v. Schempp (1963).
Ok, then I take back what I said when I though you were referencing Robinson v California/punishing drug addicts for being drug addicts. I should have clarified which decision you meant first. I think we already know where we both stand on religion in schools, so I will move on.
Secularism is the lifeblood of depraved satanists who are diligently working to destroy everything we hold dear.
Secularism is what allows us to have the freedom to choose a religion. It is the wall between church and state that prevents religion from destroying peopleâs freedoms, and it is what prevents the government from imposing on religions. It is one of the core founding principles of our country as evidenced by the first amendment establishment clause, and everything the founding fathers have said about the nature of the state/church.
and indeed the entire purpose of American freedom is to worship God and do His will
The purpose of american freedom is for the sake of freedom itself. No part of the constitution mentions god or worship. And the only mention of religion states that congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.
I find such forums to usually be low quality, but thatâs just my opinion.
I thought the Capitalism vs Socialism subreddit was pretty great, though I didnât spend a ton of time there, and I was mostly a lurker. But on several occasions I was impressed by the level of discourse there.
Why donât you start you own? Establish your own rules, and set your own culture. I know such things can be difficult to get off the ground, but maybe itâs worth a try.
if the law is insufficient to prevent natural monopolies
Well itâs theoretically impossible (or extremely hard) to prevent natural monopolies, which is why theyâre called natural. In practice, though, thereâs not many of them. Usually theyâre owned by a municipality, such as water supply for urban folks who lack their own wells, and waste processing for the same folks who lack septic tanks. Physical constraints make competition difficult in these markets.
Most large corporations are groups that grow vastly larger than their natural size due to government assistance and encouragement.
A tiny government naturally coincides with tiny businesses. Consider our founding culture in the Eighteenth Century; the big multinational companies were the Dutch East India Trading Co and the East India Co, both of which were state-chartered monopolies. By contrast, the nascent US flourished with only tiny businesses and family farms. That is our natural business culture, to which we should strive to return.
Just as a dictator (person) prevents freedom, so too can companies (people).
Apples and oranges.
A dictator says âeveryone must obey me,â and sends out armed forces to disarm the people and enforce the dictatorâs laws.
A company offers products and services for sale in a marketplace, which people are free to buy if they want, or not to buy if they donât want. A company may employ people in a voluntary arrangement where employees sell their labor to the company for a fair price, and are free to seek employment elsewhere for a better price if they so choose.
When you picture a company, think of a man with a fruit cart selling fresh fruit at a farmerâs market â thatâs the quintessential company. His family are back home picking fruit on the family farm, while he heads to market to compete against the other vendors. Customers are free to compare which fruit vendor offers the freshest fruit, and buy a little, or a lot, or none at all.
The fact that youâre comparing a fruit vendor, who offers you a fresh apricot for 7Âą, to a blood-thirsty dictator who proclaims âeveryone must placate those afflicted with gender dysphoria, on penalty of deathâ is a strain of the imagination. A company is a collective of practitioners of freedom.
You can definitely do that but your chances of success are not high.
True, but so? You keep trying and failing until you succeed. Thatâs the American way.
And those stories have the same chances of winning the lottery.
Itâs fundamentally different. The lottery is pure chance, while building a business is a measure of oneâs intelligence and drive to succeed.
Iâm not pretending itâs impossible. I am stating the fact that it is unreasonable for everybody to just create a new business and live in la la land. Sometimes fantasies come true, but they donât always.
Itâs hardly a fantasy. Itâs the American way. And itâs hardly âla la landâ. Have you never started your own business?
you canât just move to a different job to escape abuse when basically all american jobs are abusive.
What do you mean by âabusiveâ? Big bad boss man said you need to show up on time, or else youâll get fired? No jobs are abusive. Theyâre voluntary agreements for the sale of oneâs labor. Nothing more, nothing less.
You canât just have freedom against buying from walmart when walmart is the only store within a 4hr drive. Does that clarify where I am coming from better?
It doesnât, because I live in one of the most rural places in the country, and I barely ever shop at Walmart.
Why donât you start you own? Establish your own rules, and set your own culture. I know such things can be difficult to get off the ground, but maybe itâs worth a try.
I really just donât have as much free time as Iâd like. I have a full time job, a disabled girl friend, ~3 active friend/family groups, etc. At best I get an hour or two a day to myself and Iâd rather do something else other than moderating.
Well itâs theoretically impossible (or extremely hard) to prevent natural monopolies, which is why theyâre called natural.
Itâs definitely hard, but not impossible.
A tiny government naturally coincides with tiny businesses.
Historically that is not true. What youâre describing is laissez-faire capitalism, and every time it has been tried it has been an objective failure. It doesnât result in tiny businesses, it results in huge ones that create corporate towns.
A dictator says âeveryone must obey me,â and sends out armed forces to disarm the people and enforce the dictatorâs laws.
Companies do just the same when given the opportunity. They just hire mercenaries and assassins, and thatâs where the term âbannana republicâ comes from.
And armed forces arenât the only way authoritarians control the people, they also do so through law, which the corporations control.
The fact that youâre comparing a fruit vendor
Iâm not talking about small family owned businesses, I am talking about mega-corporations. Google, microsoft, amazon, meta, etc.
A company is a collective of practitioners of freedom.
When the United Fruit Company toppled governments in latin america, they were in fact not practicioners of freedom. Companies are just as capable of subverting the will of the people and destroying freedoms as dictators.
You keep trying and failing until you succeed. Thatâs the American way.
You keep failing until you starve to death, the medical debt collectors come, etc. The american dream has long been dead because we do not live in a society with social mobility.
Have you never started your own business?
I am already struggling to pay for rent, food, and utility bills, and soon my student debt will add to that. I do not have anywhere near the amount of money to start one.
What do you mean by âabusiveâ?
Iâm talking about violations of labor laws that go unpunished, workplace injuries, poverty wages, excessive hours, repetitive strain injury, wage theft.
Not all companies are bad ones to work at, but my point is that not everybody can just up and move to a new job when there are so many companies that are like this.
It doesnât, because I live in one of the most rural places in the country, and I barely ever shop at Walmart.
I really just donât have as much free time as Iâd like. I have a full time job, a disabled girl friend, ~3 active friend/family groups, etc. At best I get an hour or two a day to myself and Iâd rather do something else other than moderating.
That makes sense. But then how do you find this time for long-form arguments with strangers on the internet?
What youâre describing is laissez-faire capitalism, and every time it has been tried it has been an objective failure. It doesnât result in tiny businesses, it results in huge ones that create corporate towns.
Fiddlesticks. Look at Hong Kong until China annexed it. Small and medium-sized companies flourished. There are a ton of similar examples. I challenge you to point out a single huge multinational corporation (historical or present day) that grew without government assistance.
Companies do just the same when given the opportunity. They just hire mercenaries and assassins, and thatâs where the term âbannana republicâ comes from.
[âŠ] thus, the term banana republic is a pejorative descriptor for a servile oligarchy that abets and supports, for kickbacks, the exploitation of large-scale plantation agriculture, [âŠ]
Their governments instigate and enable their problem.
Iâm not talking about small family owned businesses, I am talking about mega-corporations.
It seems weâre in general agreement that small family owned businesses are far preferable to mega-corporations. (After all, weâre both here in the Fediverse.)
Our only differences on this topic seem to be that I view small businesses as the essential heart of American market economics, and I view mega-corps as mutants resulting from government bloat.
You keep failing until you starve to death, the medical debt collectors come, etc. The american dream has long been dead because we do not live in a society with social mobility.
Again, you focused on negativity to the exclusion of truth. The American dream is alive and well, and there are numerous success stories all around us. The idea that itâs âdeadâ (let alone long dead) has no basis in reality.
A good example is Donald Trump, who took a small loan of a million dollars ⊠(Iâm joking, but my above point is true.)
I do not have anywhere near the amount of money to start one.
Depending on the type of business, you really donât need any money, or perhaps just a few dollars. Going back to my fruit cart example, it doesnât cost any money to pick fruit and sell it. And there are a ton of sub-$100 sweaty-startup ideas out there. You may not have the time or the drive to start one, but you certainly have the money.
Not all companies are bad ones to work at, but my point is that not everybody can just up and move to a new job when there are so many companies that are like this.
I have no doubt that some employees who hate their jobs feel trapped. But I contend thatâs just their feeling, and theyâre not really trapped at all. Especially in the post-covid epoch, when thereâs such a labor shortage that you could walk into just about any business and get an interview.
Then it sounds like youâre lucky.
âLuckyâ is not the right word. I didnât grow up here. Iâve lived in a bunch of places, from urban to suburban, and now rural. I moved here because I like the area and the people here. And there are plenty of local small businesses I support as much as I can.
That makes sense. But then how do you find this time for long-form arguments with strangers on the internet?
I usually donât lol. Itâs very rare for me to get into a conversation as much of a tangled mess as this one.
Fiddlesticks. Look at Hong Kong until China annexed it. Small and medium-sized companies flourished. There are a ton of similar examples.
Hong Kong is an incredibly niche place. To point to that city state as a good example to extrapolate the effects of government policy is a bad idea/methodology.
I challenge you to point out a single huge multinational corporation (historical or present day) that grew without government assistance.
I think you missed my point, I am not stating that all or even many corporations become monopolies without government assistance. Usually what happens is that a corporation gets so big that they gain so much control that they can alter government policy, and therefore they grow with government assistance that they themselves implemented. Most if not all monopolies follow this pattern. First the start small, then they get big, then they push out competition, then they buy out the politicians, then they set the laws that make them even bigger.
Their governments instigate and enable their problem.
Instigate? No. Enable? Absolutely.
Our only differences on this topic seem to be that I view small businesses as the essential heart of American market economics, and I view mega-corps as mutants resulting from government bloat.
The mega-corporations are the natural result of capitalism. You canât have one without the other.
The American dream is alive and well, and there are numerous success stories all around us.
There are also numerous lottery winner stories around. That doesnât mean that everybody should buy lottery tickets as a means to success.
The idea that itâs âdeadâ (let alone long dead) has no basis in reality.
Nowadays people are too poor to reasonably afford a home, food, and the basic necessities. The retirement age keeps getting higher. The majority of americans are living paycheck to paycheck. It absolutely has been dead, and for a while.
good example is Donald Trump, who took a small loan of a million dollars
Inheriting wealth is not a means for being successful for the overwhelming majority of americans.
Depending on the type of business, you really donât need any money
The success of a business is directly tied to the starting investment.
I have no doubt that some employees who hate their jobs feel trapped. But I contend thatâs just their feeling, and theyâre not really trapped at all.
If you donât feel like you are free then what is the point? Regardless, itâs not just a feeling, because objectively, vertical mobility is not doing well in the united states. Horizontal mobility is not true mobility.
Especially in the post-covid epoch, when thereâs such a labor shortage that you could walk into just about any business and get an interview.
âJust about any businessâ does not equate to a livable wage, because just about all businesses have employees who are being paid below a livable wage. And like I said, horizontal mobility is not true mobility.
I usually donât lol. Itâs very rare for me to get into a conversation as much of a tangled mess as this one.
Iâm flattered. Thank you. I find the conversation enjoyable, though I agree itâs a tangled mess. Yet if youâd find it prudent to quickly wind it down, I wonât be offended.
Instigate? No. Enable? Absolutely.
Well then weâre close to splitting hairs. My contention is governments should be too small to enable companies to grow huge. I get that we donât completely see eye-to-eye on this, but Iâm not sure itâs worth our bickering over the details.
The mega-corporations are the natural result of capitalism. You canât have one without the other.
I mentioned the importance of definitions recently. Among people who disagree over capitalism, I find we are often operating on different definitions. What if we just talk about free markets? Thereâs nothing about freedom that inherently gives rise to mega-corporations. They didnât even exist until relatively modern times.
There are also numerous lottery winner stories around. That doesnât mean that everybody should buy lottery tickets as a means to success.
No kidding. When you hold a race, thereâs one winner. You might give out medals for second and third place, but most competitors are losers. And thatâs great. Everyone goes home and tries again tomorrow. In the end, some people are never able to win at all, due to lack of drive, technique, or what-have-you, and thatâs fine. Life isnât fair, and we wouldnât want it to be. All that matters is that everyoneâs able to compete, fair and square.
Nowadays people are too poor to reasonably afford a home, food, and the basic necessities. The retirement age keeps getting higher. The majority of americans are living paycheck to paycheck. It absolutely has been dead, and for a while.
Okay, now I really wonder where you live. Is it a West Coast city? What you describe is absolutely not the America I know and love.
Inheriting wealth is not a means for being successful for the overwhelming majority of americans.
Yeah, it was a joke. I explicitly said I was joking.
The success of a business is directly tied to the starting investment.
No, not usually. Its rate of scale is directly tied to the starting investment. Itâs eventual success is only tied to that certain kinds of tech startups, where a ton of work is needed before thereâs anything to show for it. For most businesses, success is tied to vision and execution.
If you donât feel like you are free then what is the point?
The point is always God. And God, incidentally, is the source of our freedom. People may feel a lack of freedom resulting from estrangement from God. Thatâs hardly the fault of corporations (although you could make a good case that any corporation propagating secular culture is indirectly at fault.)
âJust about any businessâ does not equate to a livable wage, because just about all businesses have employees who are being paid below a livable wage. And like I said, horizontal mobility is not true mobility.
Whatâs a livable wage? Thatâs a mighty subjective phrase. It wasnât long ago that many of us lived in single-room log cabins that we built ourselves, hauled our own water without plumbing, used outhouses, lacked electricity, had a horse and cart instead of a truck, and grew most of our own food. And we were happy. Because we had God, and in the end thatâs all weâve ever needed. If youâre defining a âlivable wageâ in terms of anything more than that standard, itâs unreasonable.
Iâm flattered. Thank you. I find the conversation enjoyableâŠ
I am enjoying it too, and itâs quite alright. Iâm (so far) able to keep up.
Well then weâre close to splitting hairs.
Iâll move on then from this part.
What if we just talk about free markets? Thereâs nothing aboutâŠ
Even the term âfree marketsâ is incredibly vague. And depending on what you count as âmodern timesâ, even capitalism itself hasnât existed until modern times. So it would kind of not make sense to expect to see mega corps in an economic system that doesnât permit the kind of corps we see today.
And I hate to repeat myself, but core principle of capitalism is competition, but competitions inherently have winners. And therefore the freedom you speak of inherently gives rise to mega-corps. They buy each other up and kill off competitors until they become mega-corps.
Any given loser of a competition under capitalism may not immediately die, but each loss forces a company closer and closer to dying.
everyoneâs able to compete, fair and square.
We unfortunately donât have that though due to inheritance discrepancies, and the burden of entry that corporations put in place through their control of politicians, and through the inherent difficulty of starting a business in an economy as specialized as ours.
For instance if somebody wanted to start up a new business to compete with google, at a minimum they would need several billion dollars to have a reasonable chance of success. Google has such a huge market share and is so well established that it would take decades for any new company to put an actual dent in googleâs market share.
Is it a West Coast city? What you describe is absolutely not the AmericaâŠ
I actually live on the East coast, in a mid to large sized city, I think mine is 3rd in pop for my state. And as for your second bit here, I havenât made anything up.
Yeah, it was a joke. I explicitly said I was joking.
Sorry, I am a very argumentative person if you couldnât tell already lol
No, not usually. Its rate of scale is directly tied to the starting investment. Itâs eventual success is only tied to that certain kinds of tech startups, where a ton of work is needed before thereâs anything to show for it. For most businesses, success is tied to vision and execution.
This is another one of the issues that I wish I had more data on, but unfortunately do not. The closest I was able to find was this:
And the most frequent cause of failure is lack of cash, which definitely ties into what Iâve been saying.
People may feel a lack of freedom resulting from estrangement from God.
So this is similar to the drug addiction/true christian inverse correlation that Iâve been talking about in one of the other threads. I know you donât quite agree with the freedom index Iâve been using, but freedom is not in any way correlated with christianity.
Whatâs a livable wage? Thatâs a mighty subjective phrase
Sure, itâs a subjective phrase, and I would personally like to see it added and defined within a new amendment to the constitution, though it probably would never happen
As for an actual definition, a living wage should be defined as a wage that is sufficient to raise a family on, with adequate housing and food. A living wage should be a basic but decent wage for a family.
I would also like to point out that you seem to have missed my point about the lack of freedom through vertical mobility.
And we were happy. Because we had GodâŠ
I donât think that was the reason, I think the reason was because life was literally simpler and more connected to nature. Also you canât be happy if you canât afford food and shelter.
anything more than that standard, itâs unreasonable
Iâm not saying a livable wage is one in which you will be able to afford anything fancy. It should be a basic wage, but enough so that you can have a family without worry
core principle of capitalism is competition, but competitions inherently have winners.
This is false. A broad class of competitions do not have winners. Only zero-sum games have winners. The economy is not a zero sum game. Every participant adds value.
For instance if somebody wanted to start up a new business to compete with google, at a minimum they would need several billion dollars to have a reasonable chance of success. Google has such a huge market share and is so well established that it would take decades for any new company to put an actual dent in googleâs market share.
And the most frequent cause of failure is lack of cash, which definitely ties into what Iâve been saying.
Itâs true, but most successful entrepreneurs learn from previous failures, so many of those failed companies generally result in eventual success.
Sure, itâs a subjective phrase [âlivable wageâ], and I would personally like to see it added and defined within a new amendment to the constitution, though it probably would never happen
Iâve occasionally thought it would be nice to have a website where anyone could post âbillsâ they wish were actual laws, and other users could vote on them. Itâd be fun. Not that I really think we need any more laws. I just wonder what people would come up with.
As for an actual definition, a living wage should be defined as a wage that is sufficient to raise a family on, with adequate housing and food. A living wage should be a basic but decent wage for a family.
Youâd struggle to transform that into a legally reliable definition. Does it include iPads for the kids? How about the cost of pet grooming? Vacations for the whole family to the Bahamas every couple of months? Where exactly do you draw the line? Again, it was commonplace for most people to grow their own food in the not too distant past, and we lived simple lives. Isnât a living wage, then, $0?
I would also like to point out that you seem to have missed my point about the lack of freedom through vertical mobility.
I didnât miss it. I just skipped the reply. Because I see plenty of evidence that vertical mobility is alive and well. You can deny it all youâd like, but there are so many rags-to-riches stories. Maybe you donât hear about them much because theyâre mostly Republican.
Also you canât be happy if you canât afford food and shelter.
I am talking about how jobs control when you work, how you work, what you say, what you do. They control the law, politicians, what we buy, how we buy it. They control the media and therefore the narrative. Corporations have such an immense control over american life.
My proverbial fresh fruit vendor mentions to me that heâs struggling to keep up with demand, so I tell him I can help him sell his fruit, and Iâll do it for a 15% commission. He bargains me down to 10%, and we have an agreement. He tells me which hours heâs open and I tell him I sell his fruit 24/7. After a few months, he tells me I should wear a more professional looking shirt, and I reply that his sales are up 30% MoM with me running sales, but if he really wants to control my wardrobe Iâll go sell for the competing fruit stand over there. Howâs exactly am I being controlled? Iâm not; Iâm in control of my own labor, selling it at an agreeable rate.
You also mentioned that corporations control politicians. To the degree thatâs true, itâs only because our government is so bloated that corporations are incentivized to do so. If we could stick to the 10th Amendment and return the government to its proper 18th Century size, thereâd be nothing for lobbyists to do. The federal government should be responsible for almost nothing. It should be tiny. Thatâs the root of the problem you blame on corporations. Meanwhile, every leftist continues to push for a bigger and bigger government.
We are not ranked number one in the world freedom index for a reason, we arenât actually even in the top 10. The top 10 is mostly comprised of European countries.
Iâm not sure what the âworld freedom indexâ is, but according to the 2023 Index of Economic Freedom, the US ranks 25 with the following advice:
The U.S. economy faces enormous challenges. Big-government policies have eroded limits on government, public spending continues to rise, and the regulatory burden on business has increased. Restoring the U.S. economy to the status of âfreeâ will require significant changes to reduce the size and scope of government.
Secularism is what allows us to have the freedom to choose a religion. It is the wall between church and state that prevents religion from destroying peopleâs freedoms, and it is what prevents the government from imposing on religions. It is one of the core founding principles of our country as evidenced by the first amendment establishment clause, and everything the founding fathers have said about the nature of the state/church.
When I say âsecularismâ, Iâm referring to the social trend of reduced church membership, and the growing trend of people to openly embrace atheism and agnosticism without a hint of shame. Every one of us is either with God or with Satan, and so by secularism I mean the trend of people abandoning God to embrace Satan.
Which is to say, we can really talk past each other sometimes.
The purpose of american freedom is for the sake of freedom itself. No part of the constitution mentions god or worship. And the only mention of religion states that congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.
What a libertine and hedonistic notion of freedom. It has no basis in history, our culture, or reality, all of which are essentially Christian.
Our cultureâs founding document is built upon a theological proposition:
[âŠ] that [all men] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.âThat to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, [âŠ]
Our entire culture is built upon that, a theological proposition.
And if you read all of the old American documents, almost all of them include copious quotes from the Bible, which you probably donât even recognize if youâre an atheist. Christianity runs through every fiber of our being as a nation. God is our purpose for being, our purpose for living, and our purpose for freedom. That would not have been a contentious assertion in the past.
itâs only because our government is so bloated that corporations are incentivized to do so.
Corporations are always incentivized to do so regardless of government size. If youâre a corporation and you have the power to get politicians to get a law passed, then the law gets passed even if the fed is tiny.
Thatâs the root of the problem you blame on corporations.
The root problem is lobbying (bribery) being legal. Without it we would be in a far better place.
Meanwhile, every leftist continues to push for a bigger and bigger government.
I think the issue of government size is more nuanced than that. There are things that republicans want that would make the government bigger, and there are things that democrats/leftists want that would make it smaller.
Iâm not sure what the âworld freedom indexâ is, but according to the 2023 Index of Economic Freedom, the US ranks 25 with the following advice:
There is definitely some regulation that needs to be abandoned, certain zoning laws immediately come to mind, but the largest reason why we have so little freedom here in comparison is because of government surveillance programs, corporate control, etc.
And ranking freedom solely on economic freedom is not a good methodology.
When I say âsecularismâ, Iâm referring to the social trend of reduced church membership
I donât want to make this a debate over definition, but that isnât anywhere close to the definition of secularism:
and the growing trend of people to openly embrace atheism and agnosticism without a hint of shame. Every one of us is either with God or with Satan, and so by secularism I mean the trend of people abandoning God to embrace Satan.
Atheism and agnosticism is not something to be ashamed about. People should only believe things in which their is sufficient evidence for, and there is insufficient evidence for religion. And atheism is not an embrace of Satan, we atheists donât believe in Satan either.
It has no basis in history, our culture, or reality, all of which are essentially Christian.
Christianity runs through every fiber of our being as a nation.
Iâll refer you to my other post that had quotes from the founding fathers explicitly stating that the U.S. was not founded as a christian nation.
âŠ] that [all men] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness
The delcaration of independence is not a legal document or part of american law. Only the constitution is the head of american law and it doesnât say anything about a creator, chrisitianity, etc.
almost all of them include copious quotes from the Bible, which you probably donât even recognize if youâre an atheist.
Iâve spent the better part of two decades debating with christians online in various forums, so I have read quite a lot of it at this point.
Reply to âregardless of government sizeâ, part 1 of 2:
Corporations are always incentivized to do so regardless of government size. If youâre a corporation and you have the power to get politicians to get a law passed, then the law gets passed even if the fed is tiny.
A couple of problems that make this incorrect:
A nit-pick that I find distracting: The phrase âthe Fedâ always (at least in US context) refers to the Federal Reserve, a private bank in cahoots with the federal government. I know thatâs not what you meant.
I donât think you realize just how tiny the federal government used to be. There were no taxes to fund anything, aside from nominal excise taxes on imports. There were no agencies, at all â none. Thatâs our natural federal government size. They barely had any power at all, because American government is meant to be bottom-up, with families and townships having the most power, and the federal government the least.
So no, corporations are not incentivized to lobby a tiny government which exists strictly to protect the peopleâs liberty, any more than theyâre incentivized to lobby you and me personally.
The root problem is lobbying (bribery) being legal. Without it we would be in a far better place.
Except lobbying isnât bribery. Itâs just speech, similar to advertising. I can tell my senator how great the Fediverse is and how he should make an account here, and that would count as lobbying.
The root problem is that the federal government has amassed far too much power. And to break that down, there are mainly two parts to that root problem:
The Interstate Commerce Clause
The Necessary and Proper Clause
Both have been grossly misinterpreted in violation of the Tenth Amendment to give the federal government unrestricted control over the states. The solution is for SCOTUS to apply the doctrine of originalism to restore these two clauses to their intended meaning. If they have the cahoonas to do that, ~2.87 million federal civilian employees will suddenly be out of a job, and many of our lost freedoms will be restored overnight. Oh yeah, and the incentive to lobby will move to the state level, where governors and state legislatures actually have to worry about losing taxpayers over bad policies.
I think the issue of government size is more nuanced than that. There are things that republicans want that would make the government bigger, and there are things that democrats/leftists want that would make it smaller.
Sure, well both DNC and RNC are coalitions, and we donât all agree on the details. But my view that the sole responsibility of the federal government is to protect the peopleâs liberty is a fairly generic Republican view. Border protection and national defense are the only expensive requirements of that.
There is definitely some regulation that needs to be abandoned, certain zoning laws immediately come to mind,
Agreed!
but the largest reason why we have so little freedom here in comparison is because of government surveillance programs,
Agreed!
corporate control
No!
And ranking freedom solely on economic freedom is not a good methodology.
I donât think you realize just how tiny the federal government used to be.
It basically didnât exist in the beginning, I am aware of how drastically things have changed.
Thatâs our natural federal government size.
When you say ânaturalâ here I assume you mean that the country was intended to always have the same size of federal government (which is to say basically a size of nothing). However the founding fathers intended the country to always be changing and adapting, to always become better and better. I agree that the federal government needs to be smaller (for instance I would personally cut the IRS to a 10th itâs size, because thatâs all they would really need if we switched to georgism). However, just because it needs to be smaller doesnât mean it should barely exist. When our country was founded, it was done so with the Articles of Confederation, and it was a chaotic disaster.
So no, corporations are not incentivized to lobby a tiny government which exists strictly to protect the peopleâs liberty, any more than theyâre incentivized to lobby you and me personally.
If the government is tiny, then corporations are unfettered, and that is just as bad. But even so, even with a small government, lobbying is still power that they would directly benefit from.
Except lobbying isnât bribery. Itâs just speech, similar to advertising.
If thatâs all lobbying was, I would be inclined to agree with you, but thatâs not all lobbying is. Paying for campaign contributions, promising contributions, etc are all also legal and considered lobbying. And it is effectively bribery. Itâs also legal to offer politicians lucrative job opportunities. These things are corruption and destroy our freedoms.
The solution is for SCOTUS to apply the doctrine of originalism to restore these two clauses to their intended meaning.
I had to go back to keep track of what we agreed(?) was the problem, corporate control. You say it is the two above doctrines, I disagree, believing it is a multifaceted problem of lobbying, monopolies, laizze-faire policy, etc.
I simply donât see how removing the governmentâs ability to regulate commerce would lead to less corporate control of america. Corporations would still control our wages, place of employement, type of employement, hours, how money is distributed, the media (narrative), etc. If anything it would make it harder for the government to prevent these corporations from harming our freedom.
However the founding fathers intended the country to always be changing and adapting, to always become better and better.
Thatâs progressive revisionism. They most certainly did not. If they were still around today, theyâd be rallying the militia.
Articles of Confederation, and it was a chaotic disaster.
You say that like itâs a bad thing. In retrospect itâs clear that our situation then was far preferable to where we are today. The federal governmentâs only problem then was they couldnât get the several states to give them any money, which is a perfectly acceptable problem. Whatâs more, the convention of the states had no authority to discard the Articles, so they remain our rightful federal law. I donât deny the fact that the Constitution is well accepted by almost 100% of American citizens, but the least we can do is restore it to its original intent. If we ever do, though, then youâll find me advocating to restore the Articles.
If the government is tiny, then corporations are unfettered, and that is just as bad. But even so, even with a small government, lobbying is still power that they would directly benefit from.
If government is tiny then businesses are tiny. You can lobby your governor just as you can lobby your next-door neighbor, and thereâs nothing wrong with that. You can lobby me, just as youâre sorta doing now.
Paying for campaign contributions, promising contributions, etc are all also legal and considered lobbying. And it is effectively bribery. Itâs also legal to offer politicians lucrative job opportunities. These things are corruption and destroy our freedoms.
This is a symptom of big government. When politicians have next to no power, thereâs no sense in spending money to help them.
I had to go back to keep track of what we agreed(?) was the problem,
I concede I wish I was better at staying on track in this sort of enormous conversation.
I simply donât see how removing the governmentâs ability to regulate commerce would lead to less corporate control of america.
Letâs distinguish between state and federal control. I believe itâs a sovereign stateâs role to regulate commerce within their borders as they see fit. So business sizes should vary according to state culture.
Corporations would still control our wages
Iâve already addressed this. Itâs false. When you sell your labor, you set the price you want to charge, and seek out one or more customers willing to pay that price. Corporations are nothing more than people who pay other people for their labor, as a voluntary agreement between both parties. Neither party controls the other.
place of employement, type of employement, hours, how money is distributed, the media (narrative), etc. If anything it would make it harder for the government to prevent these corporations from harming our freedom.
This is all radically disconnected from reality. Corporations donât control any of these things. You really should start a business of your own, if for no other reason than just to learn how little power it gives you.
Thatâs progressive revisionism. They most certainly did not [intend for the country to change].
They quite literally built a system in place to add amendments to the constitution and to take them away if needed. Why would they have done so if the intention was to keep the law static until the end of time?
You say that like itâs a bad thing.
It was. The economy fell apart, the states were constantly squabbling over petty things, we had Shayâs rebellion, the nationâs debts werenât being payed. The currency of the time had no value. Britain was screwing the country over with itâs blockade (which couldnât be solved due to the lack of any federal power). The articles of confederation was such a disaster that it had such a short lived life that the founders themselves got rid of it.
If government is tiny then businesses are tiny.
You have no evidence for this, let alone causation.
When politicians have next to no power, thereâs no sense in spending money to help them.
Politicians have power by definition, and corporations have a direct incentive to get as much power as they can. So there will always be motivation to spend money to bribe them regardless of the power they hold. They might spend less, sure, but they will still do it.
I concede I wish I was better at staying on track
Same. Itâs incredibly difficult.
I believe itâs a sovereign stateâs role to regulate commerce within their borders as they see fit. So business sizes should vary according to state culture.
So states should regulate commerce, but not the federal government, is that what you mean to say? If so, then how would that work out for situations where the regulation/unregualtion in surrounding states impacts a different state? For example, if california legalized weed and had the effect of making weed more available to the surrounding states, how would those surrounding states deal with it?
When you sell your labor, you set the price you want to charge, and seek out one or more customers willing to pay that price.
If everything was small business and there was greater power in the hands of laborers, and if the internet didnât exist then maybe this would be true. But the modern reality is not like that. Corporations set the wage, you apply, and if you tell them you need more money to work there they tell you to get lost*. Job postings receive hundreds, sometimes thousands of applications. Why would they lower their profitability by giving you the wage you set if the next person in the very long line will work just as hard for cheaper?
* I am aware this is less so for higher skill jobs, but most jobs you have very little power in this regard.
Corporations are nothing more than people who pay other people for their labor, as a voluntary agreement between both parties. Neither party controls the other.
Corporations tell their workers what to do and therefore control their workers. Same goes for hours. If I told my boss that I will only work Sundays-Thursdays from now on, I would be fired. That is a form of control.
You really should start a business of your own, if for no other reason than just to learn how little power it gives you.
If I were to start a business it would be a small one and therefore have no control. But again, the problem generally isnât small businesses, itâs the big ones.
They do control each of these things, and I can explain how:
place of employement - Corporations quite literally have been forcing people to return to offices or face dismissal. There are other kinds of this action, but thatâs just one example.
type of employement - Corporations are the one who decide if youâre exempt, non-exempt, a contractor, what the job responsibilities are, etc.
hours - If you refuse to work the hours you are told you are fired.
how money is distributed - At no point does your average worker control this. The higher ups decide this and almost universally decide that the majority should go to them. If businesses were truly democratic, then youâd never see a single company giving a CEO the money for a brand new yacht every year.
the media (narrative) - Virtually all media companies are owned by the rich, and they do not allow news articles and the like to be against them. For example, the Washington Post is owned by Bezos, and youâll never see an article from them criticizing Bezos or Amazon.
Corporations set the wage, you apply, and if you tell them you need more money to work there they tell you to get lost*. Job postings receive hundreds, sometimes thousands of applications. Why would they lower their profitability by giving you the wage you set if the next person in the very long line will work just as hard for cheaper?
Like any market, supply and demand does determine price. If you want to be a forest ranger, youâll be competing against a whole lot of people who like the idea of getting paid to hang out in the forest all day. Youâll get much better pay as a garbage man, since fewer people like the thought of taking that job. But as individuals, we can choose whatever kind of job we want to work, balancing our skills and aptitudes with our personal tastes and how much we value monetary remuneration compared to other measures of job satisfaction. And if youâre clever, you can figure out how to spend all day in the forest and make well over $100k (start a logging company).
Corporations tell their workers what to do and therefore control their workers. Same goes for hours. If I told my boss that I will only work Sundays-Thursdays from now on, I would be fired. That is a form of control.
Depends on the type of work. Personally I donât care when people work, as long as they show up for meetings and get their jobs done well. But sure, if youâre a gas station attendant then youâd better show up before the start of your shift.
place of employement - Corporations quite literally have been forcing people to return to offices or face dismissal. There are other kinds of this action, but thatâs just one example.
If you like remote work, and your manager doesnât understand that youâre productive working from home, then the jobâs a bad match for you and you should find a better match. Thatâs not anyone having control over the other party; itâs just conflicting values.
type of employement - Corporations are the one who decide if youâre exempt, non-exempt, a contractor, what the job responsibilities are, etc.
Iâve known people to negotiate their status when getting hired. Everythingâs on the table in a negotiation. You just need to recognize it as a negotiation, and learn to negotiate well.
hours - If you refuse to work the hours you are told you are fired.
Again, this is very much dependent on the kind of job. Many jobs just require you to get a certain amount of work done.
how money is distributed - At no point does your average worker control this. The higher ups decide this and almost universally decide that the majority should go to them. If businesses were truly democratic, then youâd never see a single company giving a CEO the money for a brand new yacht every year.
You lost me here. First off, we wouldnât want a business to be democratic any more than weâd want our country to be. A democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what to eat for supper. Itâs a tragically terrible idea, under almost all circumstances. So no, of course businesses arenât democratic.
If youâve ever tried to hire a CEO (and itâs obvious you havenât), youâd know itâs extremely hard to find someone qualified to do the job well. Again, their compensation is a function of supply and demand. Thereâs almost zero supply. And if you want to be cheap and hire an inexperienced or second-rate CEO, youâre taking a big risk with the life-blood of the company.
With both of those points established, Iâm lost as to your overall point about how money is distributed. You get a paycheck or direct deposit. Some businesses pay cash. A few will pay in bitcoin or other cryptocurrency. You donât seem to be discussing any of these things, but theyâre how money is distributed.
the media (narrative) - Virtually all media companies are owned by the rich, and they do not allow news articles and the like to be against them. For example, the Washington Post is owned by Bezos, and youâll never see an article from them criticizing Bezos or Amazon.
Yes, well thatâs true if weâre only discussing the mass media. Most of the conservative media outlets are tiny operations.
But thatâs not evidence that companies seek power over people. Itâs just evidence that the personality type of journalists tends to be leftist, and while thatâs not true of all journalists, theyâve banded together with like-minded people.
Even in the worst case examples, big tech silencing conservatives, which is a very real problem with examples far too numerous to count (Why do my mailings from Team DeSantis keep going to spam, no matter how many times I click ânot spamâ?), thatâs not corporations trying to control people. Itâs just employees with personal political preferences who work alongside like-minded people, and who believe theyâre making the world a better place.
They quite literally built a system in place to add amendments to the constitution and to take them away if needed. Why would they have done so if the intention was to keep the law static until the end of time?
They also made it remarkably difficult to amend. They wouldnât have done that if they thought it should frequently change.
The economy fell apart, the states were constantly squabbling over petty things, we had Shayâs rebellion, the nationâs debts werenât being payed. The currency of the time had no value. Britain was screwing the country over with itâs blockade (which couldnât be solved due to the lack of any federal power). The articles of confederation was such a disaster that it had such a short lived life that the founders themselves got rid of it.
I understand the frustrations, though those points are a biased history. I donât think the founders would have abandoned the Articles if they could have foreseen the behemoth they created in its place. But indeed they did, and honestly Iâd be okay with it if weâd just stick to their original design.
Politicians have power by definition, and corporations have a direct incentive to get as much power as they can.
The singular goal of the American republic is to limit the power of politicians. Thatâs basically what the Constitutionâs all about.
Corporations do not seek power. They seek sales. And they gain sales by offering goods and services that people want more than their own money. Itâs not having power over someone to sell them something they love.
So states should regulate commerce, but not the federal government, is that what you mean to say?
Affirmative.
If so, then how would that work out for situations where the regulation/unregualtion in surrounding states impacts a different state? For example, if california legalized weed and had the effect of making weed more available to the surrounding states, how would those surrounding states deal with it?
States make agreements with their neighbors, much like reciprocity for CCW licenses. Indeed the whole Union is meant to pretty much be a coalition, so if South America were to invade Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, for instance, the rest of the states are supposed to send their militias south to help defend the border. If Oregon legalized marijuana and Idaho didnât (to use a real-life example of bordering states), then LEOs in Idaho can look a bit more suspiciously at people with Oregon plates, and possibly pull them over and see what they smell. A more extreme solution would be to erect border checkpoints to conduct ârandomâ searches.
If everything was small business and there was greater power in the hands of laborers, and if the internet didnât exist then maybe this would be true. But the modern reality is not like that.
But reality is like that. Have a look here. I want to copy and paste the whole page.
Reply to âregardless of government sizeâ, part 2 of 2:
I donât want to make this a debate over definition, but that isnât anywhere close to the definition of secularism:
I was all ready to reply that the wiki article has been biased by secularists, but then I read it (well, I skimmed the beginning of it), and it seems largely agreeable, and supports my personal definition. The social trend of reduced church membership, and the growing trend of people to openly embrace atheism and agnosticism without a hint of shame, are both completely in line with people âseeking to conduct human affairs based on naturalistic considerations, uninvolved with religion.â The article also notes that:
The term âsecularismâ has a broad range of meanings, and in the most schematic, may encapsulate any stance that promotes the secular in any given context.
Thatâs awkward wording, but does indeed agree with my personal definition.
Atheism and agnosticism is not something to be ashamed about. People should only believe things in which their is sufficient evidence for, and there is insufficient evidence for religion. And atheism is not an embrace of Satan, we atheists donât believe in Satan either.
I know you believe Satan doesnât exist. Youâre in complete denial of the massive influence he has over you.
Youâre either with God or youâre against Him. Thatâs a really important concept that you seem to keep ignoring. When you reject God, you embrace Satan â even if youâre unaware that youâre doing so â and even if you think thatâs impossible â thatâs what youâre doing. And that most certainly is something to be ashamed about.
As for evidence, once you accept Christ, you will finally understand that abundant evidence is everywhere you look.
Iâll refer you to my other post that had quotes from the founding fathers explicitly stating that the U.S. was not founded as a christian nation.
âŠwhich I rebutted. I wonder if youâre missing some of my replies. (Edit: maybe I rebutted it after you wrote this.)
The delcaration of independence is not a legal document or part of american law.
Itâs the primary document to establish our culture and our national identity. I canât overemphasize that point. When was the last time you read it?
Iâve spent the better part of two decades debating with christians online in various forums, so I have read quite a lot of it at this point.
Do you suppose your motivation to do that was provided by God or Satan? (âNeitherâ would be an invalid answer.)
Thatâs awkward wording, but does indeed agree with my personal definition.
I donât think they match, but again definitions arenât really why I am here, so I will move on.
I know you believe Satan doesnât exist. Youâre in complete denial of the massive influence he has over you.
When you say âcomplete denialâ, do you mean the kind of denial of that secretly knows some unfortunate truth, or literally denying? Because if it is the former you are mistaken.
Thatâs a really important concept that you seem to keep ignoring.
Thatâs because I donât think it makes sense. I donât believe in either of the sides you are talking about. So itâs kind of like asking âare you rooting for team A or team Bâ, but the sports teams* that youâre talking about are all fictional. It just doesnât make sense for me to say I am on a sports team that I think is made up.
* I know they arenât sports teams, but I couldnât think of a better analogy.
When you reject God, you embrace Satan â even if youâre unaware that youâre doing so â and even if you think thatâs impossible â thatâs what youâre doing. And that most certainly is something to be ashamed about.
Iâm embracing neither. I canât embrace something I donât believe in.
As for evidence, once you accept Christ, you will finally understand that abundant evidence is everywhere you look.
I know you donât think I was ever a christian, but when I was, I thought I had abundant evidence. But the closer I looked at my reasons for believing the more I realized they werenât good reasons.
Itâs the primary document to establish our culture and our national identity.
I think trying to single out a single document that defines a 246 year old country is a mistake, because no such document could possibly define such a long and chaotic history/country.
I canât overemphasize that point. When was the last time you read it?
This question is not relevant to the conversation, as it is just setting up for an ad hominem fallacy.
Do you suppose your motivation to do that was provided by God or Satan? (âNeitherâ would be an invalid answer.)
Iâm sorry but the answer is âneitherâ whether you consider it valid or not. I am not a christian and therefore not bound to âchristian logicâ so to speak that would say that such a dichotomy is valid. My motivations are my own to the extent that an american can.
definitions arenât really why I am here, so I will move on.
Definitions are so important! Oftentimes we talk past each other, thinking weâre arguing when we actually agree on 95% of the issue, but weâre using different working definitions of our words, and misinterpreting each other accordingly.
When you say âcomplete denialâ, do you mean the kind of denial of that secretly knows some unfortunate truth, or literally denying?
I have no background in psychology, but I donât think denial necessarily involves secret knowledge. I just went to research the topic, and quickly remembered that I dislike the entire field of psychology, so I didnât get far. Sorry. But no, I donât pretend to know what you really know and what you donât. Thatâs between you and God, not me. I just think youâve intentionally decided to refute God, and thereby unknowingly invited Satan to guide your thoughts.
I donât believe in either of the sides you are talking about. So itâs kind of like asking âare you rooting for team A or team Bâ, but the sports teams* that youâre talking about are all fictional. It just doesnât make sense for me to say I am on a sports team that I think is made up.
Thatâs a good analogy, and I understand your perspective. But the problem is that good and evil are entirely real, and itâs absurd to pretend theyâre not. Youâre ignoring the spiritual warfare that underlies everything happening in our world, in our lives, and indeed in this very conversation. Youâre denying the foundational tenets of Western Civilization, based on millennia of correspondence with and guidance from the Lord our God. You arrogantly pretending youâre somehow smarter than our ancestors who built this civilization with Godâs blessing, and whatâs far worse is youâre arrogantly pretending youâre somehow smarter than God Almighty Himself. Thatâs why I say youâre in denial. God does not like to be denied. But the Devil does, and seizes upon that denial to manipulate you.
The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didnât exist.
âVerbal Kint
Iâm embracing neither. I canât embrace something I donât believe in.
But you can, and you do. When you deny God, you embrace Satan. There is no third option.
I know you donât think I was ever a christian, but when I was, I thought I had abundant evidence. But the closer I looked at my reasons for believing the more I realized they werenât good reasons.
I find that completely believable. You predicated your faith on faulty reasoning, and as a result, your faith was unstable. Solid faith cannot be predicated on reasons at all â thatâs what makes it faith. But when your faith is solid, youâre then provided with the ability to see the abundant evidence for what it truly is. The key is that the evidence comes second, contingent on faith.
I think trying to single out a single document that defines a 246 year old country is a mistake, because no such document could possibly define such a long and chaotic history/country.
Iâd say thatâs reasonable if I wasnât familiar with the US. But every child memorizes key lines from that single document, and learns all about how it made us the greatest country on earth. And every American refers back to it in common parlance, while discussing and debating a wide variety of issues. And that single document continues to influence all of our legislation and jurisprudence. So in the case of the US, that single document really does define our culture.
Itâs worth noting, though, that you mention that weâre a 246 year old country, and itâs 247 (welcome to 2023!), but more importantly Iâd say most of what happened during those intervening years are far less important than what happened at the outset. Even if our state and federal governments were to topple, and a foreign army was to invade, American flags would still fly because our national character was established at the outset of our founding, and it cannot be destroyed.
Out of curiosity, if it wouldnât be invasive, which state are you in (or from, or most familiar with)?
Definitions are also defined by the way in which the majority of people use them. The word âyeetâ was utter nonsense until enough people understood the word and its meaning to land itself a spot in dictionaries.
So I hesitate to argue over definitions, because there is an âobjectiveâ answer so to speak, and from what I can tell you seem to use completely different definitions from the norm. So I donât see much point in talking about it.
Thatâs between you and God, not me. I just think youâve intentionally decided to refute God, and thereby unknowingly invited Satan to guide your thoughts.
I hate to repeat myself but this goes pretty close along the lines of what I said in one of the other threads, and that is that beliefs as I understand them are not a choice. So it simply doesnât make sense to say somebody has intentionally decided to refute god. Just as I cannot choose to become christian, you cannot choose to become muslim. We can choose what ideas we are exposed to and that can have an effect on us, but it is indirect at most.
But the problem is that good and evil are entirely real, and itâs absurd to pretend theyâre not.
I know a lot of christians understand god to be good itself and satan to be the opposite, but thatâs not really how I see it. Sure, good and evil exist but they are human concepts, human labels that we ascribe to actions. They arenât literal entities that exist. I am not pretending good and evil donât exist. They exist just as much as friendship does. It isnât anything physical or some being, itâs a human label.
Youâre denying the foundational tenets of Western Civilization
So be it. If there are problems with the foundation of western civilization then there ought to be changes to fix the problems. There used to be a time when western civilization permitted slavery (and technically still does), so why would I treat it as perfect?
You arrogantly pretending youâre somehow smarter than our ancestors who built this civilization with Godâs blessing
Humans stand on the shoulders of our ancestors through our ability to transfer knowledge from one generation to the next. Couple that with our ability to analyze history and hind sight, and itâs very easy to discover flaws of the past. I am not saying or pretending I am smarter than previous generations because you donât need to be to discover such flaws. To put it in an analogy, I play chess a lot and have a friend who is significantly smarter than me at it. He beats me basically every time. However, when he makes a mistake in the game I still have (on occasion) the ability to discover it, and very occasionally beat him. Yet I never say or pretend I am smarter than him.
youâre somehow smarter than God Almighty Himself.
I canât say I am smarter than something I donât believe exists.
But you can, and you do. When you deny God, you embrace Satan. There is no third option.
The third option is that these beings simply do not exist.
faith cannot be predicated on reasons at all
And therefore I want none of it.
So in the case of the US, that single document really does define our culture.
Too much has happened in our country for that to be true.
and itâs 247
Whoops! I should have paid slightly more attention to my google search result.
Out of curiosity, if it wouldnât be invasive, which state are you in (or from, or most familiar with)?
Iâd rather not say at the risk of doxing myself, but Iâll say I am from the north east coast.
So I hesitate to argue over definitions, because there is an âobjectiveâ answer so to speak, and from what I can tell you seem to use completely different definitions from the norm. So I donât see much point in talking about it.
If you ask a hundred people for the definition of any word, youâll get a hundred different definitions. Sure theyâll be similar, but no two will likely be identical. Usually we assume similar is good enough. But when we disagree over a contentious topic, it can help to define our terms because they may be radically dissimilar.
For many such terms, the political Right and Left will both use their own flavor of definitions which are quite different from the other sideâs. I suspect thatâs what youâre observing when you say my definitions are different from the norm. Itâs all too easy to think we disagree when in fact we mostly agree but are defining words differently.
Just as I cannot choose to become christian, you cannot choose to become muslim. We can choose what ideas we are exposed to and that can have an effect on us, but it is indirect at most.
I chose to become a Christian. Nobody found me and convinced me. I sought it out, learned about it, read the Bible, and accepted Jesus. It was totally a choice. And whatâs more, Iâd say I repeatedly choose to be a Christian every time I struggle, every time my faith is tested, and every time I slip and sin. I turn to Christ and ask for forgiveness, again and again, and every time I choose to be Christian. Of course itâs a choice, and you choose too.
Sure, good and evil exist but they are human concepts, human labels that we ascribe to actions. They arenât literal entities that exist.
Yes, they are human concepts, and yes these two concepts are distinct from the literal entities of God and Satan. But where do you think the two human concepts came from? Adam and Eve had to reflect on their expulsion, and conceive of concepts to describe the situation. So we all do, as we go through life. Just as the word âphotosynthesisâ describes a human concept which describes a real phenomenon, so true good and evil are predicated on our experiences contending with literal entities.
If there are problems with the foundation of western civilization then there ought to be changes to fix the problems.
I give you credit for at least admitting it. So often it seems like leftists are following a program to destroy western civilization, but Iâm pretty sure this is the first time Iâve witnessed an admission of your willingness to do so.
Listen, our politics are different, reflecting our different personal values, experiences, and understandings of the world. As a conservative, my raison dâĂȘtre is to preserve Western Civilization (AKA Christendom). In all of our messages, most (all?) of what Iâve written comes down to that. To my view, itâs crucial and nonnegotiable. Everything we have of any value at all comes from Western Civilization. Itâs destruction can result in nothing more than the fulfillment of end-times prophecy.
Humans stand on the shoulders of our ancestors through our ability to transfer knowledge from one generation to the next. Couple that with our ability to analyze history and hind sight, and itâs very easy to discover flaws of the past. I am not saying or pretending I am smarter than previous generations because you donât need to be to discover such flaws.
I understand your perspective. But I also know we frequently think the past is flawed just because we donât understand it. Similar to how teens believe they know so much more than their parents, only to realize years later that they were wrong about pretty much everything.
Why do you suppose ancient people were overall more religious than people today? When we look up at night, we see light pollution. Most of us have no clue what our own sky looks like. When we look out of our windows, most of us see buildings, cement, infrastructure, people, vehicles, and maybe a few landscaped trees and lawns. Most of us have no clue what our planet naturally looks like. Maybe we visit a national park and snap a few photos for Instagram just to prove we were there.
Ancient peoples saw Godâs handiwork everywhere they looked, and it was breathtakingly jaw-dropping and truly awesome. We live in a world where weâve built all of these things to constantly blind us from that. We have absolutely no idea, on average, what our own world looks like. Platoâs Allegory of the Cave is what weâve built all around ourselves. Our only hope of knowing truth is to look to God, and read His wisdom and knowledge passed down to us from the ancients: the Bible.
If you see a mistake, itâs probable youâre evaluating an illusion.
I play chess a lot and have a friend who is significantly smarter than me at it.
Youâre fortunate to have a chess partner. I havenât had one in ages. I miss playing it.
I think youâre looking for some kind of political debate forum. I canât speak for the moderator or anyone else here, but coming from reddit I expect this to be a place for conservatives to come together and build upon a shared perspective of the world.
Completely false. Walmart and Amazon are both Delaware corporations, which means theyâre governed by Delawareâs particular corporate law. Both are publicly held, which additionally obligates them to follow the strict rules of the SEC, including quarterly earnings reports. Moreover federal international trade agreements and laws regarding imports and exports, including tax laws, deeply impact both Walmart and Amazon. A proper reply would be book-length, but suffice it to say every single decision made at Walmart and Amazon are deeply entwined with government regulations.
Corporations are people. They are literally people. Have you never worked in a corporation? Theyâre not some kind of mythical beast. Theyâre just every-day Americans working for a living.
Hogwash. You can do it with less than $1 and entrepreneurial spirit. There are so many rags-to-riches stories that define our blessed country, and more appear every day. It sounds like youâre just not trying hard enough. Maybe you donât want it bad enough. And if so thatâs fine, but donât pretend itâs impossible.
You have absolutely no clue what slavery is. Thatâs bizarre. Normal commercial life in a free market is about as far away from slavery as possible. You can become a billionaire or a beach bum, or anything in between. Itâs completely up to you, and nobodyâs going to come around and whip you to death if you donât get back to work.
What on earth are you talking about? You sound like youâve never had a real job, but youâve spent years reading Marx. This is delusional.
The two relevant cases are Engel v. Vitale (1962) and Abington School District v. Schempp (1963).
Wow, no. What? Secularism is the lifeblood of depraved satanists who are diligently working to destroy everything we hold dear. Through Christ alone can we receive freedom from sin, and indeed the entire purpose of American freedom is to worship God and do His will. Oppression happens when we lack that freedom. You have it precisely backwards.
Well, a web search turned up this as the first result:
I havenât read that whole study, and I donât know their methodology, so they may well cite an efficacy below 100%. Personally I arrive at 100% by deduction: those who are saved evidence their salvation by being shielded from temptation to abuse drugs, while anyone lacking that evidence is clearly not yet saved.
Whatever the methodology, though, claiming that âtheir success rate is no better than chanceâ is a lie based on a downright anti-Christian bias.
It is the sick who need a physician. Medical professionals (like most other people) generally avoid proselytizing to everyone under all professional circumstances.
Thatâs a meta study, and the only study they cite which mentions any control group only controls for depression. None of that controls for community engagement/health/connections, which is what I argue is the true problem. I would need better evidence than this.
Not only that, but it seems that this study at best only establishes correlation, not causation, nor the direction of causation.
The study you cited only lists a 33% change in drug use:
âIn their study, Chen and VanderWeele (2018) found that people who attended religious services at least weekly in childhood and adolescence were 33% less likely to use illegal drugs.â
Additionally your study cites this graph:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6759672/bin/10943_2019_876_Fig4_HTML.jpg
Now it has been a while since my last statistics class, so I donât recall the exact methodology to determine likelyhood of causality between these two lines, however just from a quick glance these two rates seem to have a low/medium correlation. They wander closer and farther apart over the 20 years of this graph, and it seems that the drug death rate precedes the religious affiliation rate, which is the reverse of what we would expect if religious affiliation was causing drug deaths.
This all has made me curious enough to do some napkin math myself. Now this is incredibly terrible methodology, but if what you say is true then it should be apparent. I charted countries by irreligiosity, christianity, and drug use, and it doesnât look like there is any correlation:
https://i.imgur.com/VR58Byw.png
This is a graph of irreligiosity vs drug use. There isnât much of a correlation here if any. If being an atheist/agnostic/none/etc made you more likely to be a drug user, we should expect a nice smooth rise in drug use correlated with atheism. But thatâs not what happens here in this chart.
https://i.imgur.com/V9HHLBl.png
This chart is basically the same thing, but ordered by how christian each country is. If christianity/Jesus/god was anywhere close to 100% efficicacy against drug use, we should expect to see a similarly nice smooth graph, correlating drug use inversely with christianity. But thatâs also not what happens here.
So if youâre right, that it is a 100% rate, if your deduction is correct, then why donât we see trends that support that?
Here is where I pulled the data from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_by_country
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_irreligion
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/drug-use-by-country
I definitely have an anti-christian bias, and I will readily admit that. However it isnât a lie, nor is it based on my bias. If I recall there was a leaked report from AA floating around somewhere online from AA, they did a study to see how effective their program was, and discovered it was no better than chance. Iâll see if I can find it another time when I get the chance. For now this has already been a lot to compile, especially the two charts I made.
Not only that, but it seems that this study at best only establishes correlation, not causation, nor the direction of causation.
Once again, we seem to be talking past each other. That 33% does not apply to what I meant.
Iâll try to explain more clearly.
Thank you for your charts and your deductions. I appreciate your effort to communicate those ideas.
The point that I was trying to make, though, when I claimed 100% efficacy, is that self-reported religious affiliation is not important, but rather what is important is salvation. 100% of those saved are able to successfully pray to be shielded from temptation to sin, and are thereby able to overcome their drug addictions. Anyone who claims a religious affiliation but is unable to kick their nasty drug habit has clearly not yet been saved. This is how we can deduce 100% as a priori knowledge.
Thank you for admitting bias! I wish that was commonplace. I might just go update my profile with a list of self-admitted biases, if I can manage to produce a list of them all.
Iâll read it if you find it, but I donât think it could convince me that legitimate salvation has anything less than 100% efficacy. Their methodology must have been testing for something else.
And salvation rates would presumably be tied to religious affiliation rates. A country with 0 christians will have 0 saved people, and a country with n christians will have n * (unknown multiplier) saved people. Does that make sense?
If so you can understand that these charts should still show the effect.
I could help you with that if you like lol.
If I recall, it was simply looking at recidivism rates for members of AA.
Not necessarily. Churches have struggled to retain members for various reasons. A Christian may feel disaffected of his local denominational institution, while maintaining absolute loyalty to God. The two rates are loosely related for sure, but itâs a Venn diagram.
I suppose it depends on how you define âChristianâ, but the standard definition is equivalent to âone who has been savedâ, so the multiplier is 1. But religious affiliation is a separate issue.
Iâm not stating that they should be directly tied to one another, but surely it would be related enough to see an effect on drug rates, but we do not.
Even with your definition of âChristianâ the same math should apply.
(0) = (0)
(n) âchristiansâ = (n * x) true christians
Iâm sure X would vary from country to country, but you simply cannot have many âtrue christiansâ, whatever they may be that fit your definition, without lots of other âsuperficialâ christians.
I would reply to the other two messages you sent to my lemmy.world account, but that instance is down at the moment due to the ddos attacks, so Iâll respond to those at another time.
Maybe, but Iâm not sure why that matters. The essence of our dispute here is over whether salvation works reliably for kicking a drug addiction.
It matters because if âtrue christianâ population is correlated with self reported christian population, which it should be, then self reported christian population should also be inversely correlated with drug addicition.
To break it down a little further:
(n) âchristiansâ = (n * x) true christians
(n) âchristiansâ = inverse (drug addicition)
Therefore:
Does that make sense?
Yes, that does make sense. If the two are really uncorrelated, then it would appear some people are lying about their faith.
I also needed to split this up, so this is part 1.
I find such forums to usually be low quality, but thatâs just my opinion.
While true, that doesnât change anything. Corporations can still be monopolies while being legal if the law is insufficient to prevent natural monopolies.
Corporations are organizations of people. But regardless of what you define them as, people or organizations, you cannot have freedom if corporations control everything. Just as a dictator (person) prevents freedom, so too can companies (people).
You can definitely do that but your chances of success are not high.
And those stories have the same chances of winning the lottery. Sure people win the lottery all the time, but that doesnât mean everyone will.
Iâm not pretending itâs impossible. I am stating the fact that it is unreasonable for everybody to just create a new business and live in la la land. Sometimes fantasies come true, but they donât always.
I am using hyperbole. I am not stating that what we experience in America is literal chattel slavery. The point is that you canât just move to a different job to escape abuse when basically all american jobs are abusive. You canât just have freedom against buying from walmart when walmart is the only store within a 4hr drive. Does that clarify where I am coming from better?
I am talking about how jobs control when you work, how you work, what you say, what you do. They control the law, politicians, what we buy, how we buy it. They control the media and therefore the narrative. Corporations have such an immense control over american life. We are not ranked number one in the world freedom index for a reason, we arenât actually even in the top 10. The top 10 is mostly comprised of European countries.
And Iâm not going to address the âreal jobâ part because that is a true scottsman fallacy waiting to happen. I will tell you this, I have never read Marx, I do not label myself a marxists, and I have had several jobs over the years at this point.
Ok, then I take back what I said when I though you were referencing Robinson v California/punishing drug addicts for being drug addicts. I should have clarified which decision you meant first. I think we already know where we both stand on religion in schools, so I will move on.
Secularism is what allows us to have the freedom to choose a religion. It is the wall between church and state that prevents religion from destroying peopleâs freedoms, and it is what prevents the government from imposing on religions. It is one of the core founding principles of our country as evidenced by the first amendment establishment clause, and everything the founding fathers have said about the nature of the state/church.
The purpose of american freedom is for the sake of freedom itself. No part of the constitution mentions god or worship. And the only mention of religion states that congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.
Reply to âjust my opinionâ, Part 1 of 2:
I thought the Capitalism vs Socialism subreddit was pretty great, though I didnât spend a ton of time there, and I was mostly a lurker. But on several occasions I was impressed by the level of discourse there.
Why donât you start you own? Establish your own rules, and set your own culture. I know such things can be difficult to get off the ground, but maybe itâs worth a try.
Well itâs theoretically impossible (or extremely hard) to prevent natural monopolies, which is why theyâre called natural. In practice, though, thereâs not many of them. Usually theyâre owned by a municipality, such as water supply for urban folks who lack their own wells, and waste processing for the same folks who lack septic tanks. Physical constraints make competition difficult in these markets.
Most large corporations are groups that grow vastly larger than their natural size due to government assistance and encouragement.
A tiny government naturally coincides with tiny businesses. Consider our founding culture in the Eighteenth Century; the big multinational companies were the Dutch East India Trading Co and the East India Co, both of which were state-chartered monopolies. By contrast, the nascent US flourished with only tiny businesses and family farms. That is our natural business culture, to which we should strive to return.
Apples and oranges.
When you picture a company, think of a man with a fruit cart selling fresh fruit at a farmerâs market â thatâs the quintessential company. His family are back home picking fruit on the family farm, while he heads to market to compete against the other vendors. Customers are free to compare which fruit vendor offers the freshest fruit, and buy a little, or a lot, or none at all.
The fact that youâre comparing a fruit vendor, who offers you a fresh apricot for 7Âą, to a blood-thirsty dictator who proclaims âeveryone must placate those afflicted with gender dysphoria, on penalty of deathâ is a strain of the imagination. A company is a collective of practitioners of freedom.
True, but so? You keep trying and failing until you succeed. Thatâs the American way.
Itâs fundamentally different. The lottery is pure chance, while building a business is a measure of oneâs intelligence and drive to succeed.
Itâs hardly a fantasy. Itâs the American way. And itâs hardly âla la landâ. Have you never started your own business?
What do you mean by âabusiveâ? Big bad boss man said you need to show up on time, or else youâll get fired? No jobs are abusive. Theyâre voluntary agreements for the sale of oneâs labor. Nothing more, nothing less.
It doesnât, because I live in one of the most rural places in the country, and I barely ever shop at Walmart.
I really just donât have as much free time as Iâd like. I have a full time job, a disabled girl friend, ~3 active friend/family groups, etc. At best I get an hour or two a day to myself and Iâd rather do something else other than moderating.
Itâs definitely hard, but not impossible.
Historically that is not true. What youâre describing is laissez-faire capitalism, and every time it has been tried it has been an objective failure. It doesnât result in tiny businesses, it results in huge ones that create corporate towns.
Companies do just the same when given the opportunity. They just hire mercenaries and assassins, and thatâs where the term âbannana republicâ comes from.
And armed forces arenât the only way authoritarians control the people, they also do so through law, which the corporations control.
Iâm not talking about small family owned businesses, I am talking about mega-corporations. Google, microsoft, amazon, meta, etc.
When the United Fruit Company toppled governments in latin america, they were in fact not practicioners of freedom. Companies are just as capable of subverting the will of the people and destroying freedoms as dictators.
You keep failing until you starve to death, the medical debt collectors come, etc. The american dream has long been dead because we do not live in a society with social mobility.
I am already struggling to pay for rent, food, and utility bills, and soon my student debt will add to that. I do not have anywhere near the amount of money to start one.
Iâm talking about violations of labor laws that go unpunished, workplace injuries, poverty wages, excessive hours, repetitive strain injury, wage theft.
https://www.greenamerica.org/choose-fair-labor/us-companies-exploiting-workers
https://apnews.com/article/how-companies-rip-off-poor-employees-6c5364b4f9c69d9bc1b0093519935a5a
https://hbr.org/2020/06/times-up-for-toxic-workplaces
Not all companies are bad ones to work at, but my point is that not everybody can just up and move to a new job when there are so many companies that are like this.
Then it sounds like youâre lucky.
That makes sense. But then how do you find this time for long-form arguments with strangers on the internet?
Fiddlesticks. Look at Hong Kong until China annexed it. Small and medium-sized companies flourished. There are a ton of similar examples. I challenge you to point out a single huge multinational corporation (historical or present day) that grew without government assistance.
Yeah no. Read the wiki on banana republics. From the intro:
Their governments instigate and enable their problem.
It seems weâre in general agreement that small family owned businesses are far preferable to mega-corporations. (After all, weâre both here in the Fediverse.)
Our only differences on this topic seem to be that I view small businesses as the essential heart of American market economics, and I view mega-corps as mutants resulting from government bloat.
Again, you focused on negativity to the exclusion of truth. The American dream is alive and well, and there are numerous success stories all around us. The idea that itâs âdeadâ (let alone long dead) has no basis in reality.
A good example is Donald Trump, who took a small loan of a million dollars ⊠(Iâm joking, but my above point is true.)
Depending on the type of business, you really donât need any money, or perhaps just a few dollars. Going back to my fruit cart example, it doesnât cost any money to pick fruit and sell it. And there are a ton of sub-$100 sweaty-startup ideas out there. You may not have the time or the drive to start one, but you certainly have the money.
I have no doubt that some employees who hate their jobs feel trapped. But I contend thatâs just their feeling, and theyâre not really trapped at all. Especially in the post-covid epoch, when thereâs such a labor shortage that you could walk into just about any business and get an interview.
âLuckyâ is not the right word. I didnât grow up here. Iâve lived in a bunch of places, from urban to suburban, and now rural. I moved here because I like the area and the people here. And there are plenty of local small businesses I support as much as I can.
I usually donât lol. Itâs very rare for me to get into a conversation as much of a tangled mess as this one.
Hong Kong is an incredibly niche place. To point to that city state as a good example to extrapolate the effects of government policy is a bad idea/methodology.
I think you missed my point, I am not stating that all or even many corporations become monopolies without government assistance. Usually what happens is that a corporation gets so big that they gain so much control that they can alter government policy, and therefore they grow with government assistance that they themselves implemented. Most if not all monopolies follow this pattern. First the start small, then they get big, then they push out competition, then they buy out the politicians, then they set the laws that make them even bigger.
Instigate? No. Enable? Absolutely.
The mega-corporations are the natural result of capitalism. You canât have one without the other.
There are also numerous lottery winner stories around. That doesnât mean that everybody should buy lottery tickets as a means to success.
Nowadays people are too poor to reasonably afford a home, food, and the basic necessities. The retirement age keeps getting higher. The majority of americans are living paycheck to paycheck. It absolutely has been dead, and for a while.
Inheriting wealth is not a means for being successful for the overwhelming majority of americans.
The success of a business is directly tied to the starting investment.
If you donât feel like you are free then what is the point? Regardless, itâs not just a feeling, because objectively, vertical mobility is not doing well in the united states. Horizontal mobility is not true mobility.
âJust about any businessâ does not equate to a livable wage, because just about all businesses have employees who are being paid below a livable wage. And like I said, horizontal mobility is not true mobility.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index
Iâm flattered. Thank you. I find the conversation enjoyable, though I agree itâs a tangled mess. Yet if youâd find it prudent to quickly wind it down, I wonât be offended.
Well then weâre close to splitting hairs. My contention is governments should be too small to enable companies to grow huge. I get that we donât completely see eye-to-eye on this, but Iâm not sure itâs worth our bickering over the details.
I mentioned the importance of definitions recently. Among people who disagree over capitalism, I find we are often operating on different definitions. What if we just talk about free markets? Thereâs nothing about freedom that inherently gives rise to mega-corporations. They didnât even exist until relatively modern times.
No kidding. When you hold a race, thereâs one winner. You might give out medals for second and third place, but most competitors are losers. And thatâs great. Everyone goes home and tries again tomorrow. In the end, some people are never able to win at all, due to lack of drive, technique, or what-have-you, and thatâs fine. Life isnât fair, and we wouldnât want it to be. All that matters is that everyoneâs able to compete, fair and square.
Okay, now I really wonder where you live. Is it a West Coast city? What you describe is absolutely not the America I know and love.
Yeah, it was a joke. I explicitly said I was joking.
No, not usually. Its rate of scale is directly tied to the starting investment. Itâs eventual success is only tied to that certain kinds of tech startups, where a ton of work is needed before thereâs anything to show for it. For most businesses, success is tied to vision and execution.
The point is always God. And God, incidentally, is the source of our freedom. People may feel a lack of freedom resulting from estrangement from God. Thatâs hardly the fault of corporations (although you could make a good case that any corporation propagating secular culture is indirectly at fault.)
Whatâs a livable wage? Thatâs a mighty subjective phrase. It wasnât long ago that many of us lived in single-room log cabins that we built ourselves, hauled our own water without plumbing, used outhouses, lacked electricity, had a horse and cart instead of a truck, and grew most of our own food. And we were happy. Because we had God, and in the end thatâs all weâve ever needed. If youâre defining a âlivable wageâ in terms of anything more than that standard, itâs unreasonable.
I am enjoying it too, and itâs quite alright. Iâm (so far) able to keep up.
Iâll move on then from this part.
Even the term âfree marketsâ is incredibly vague. And depending on what you count as âmodern timesâ, even capitalism itself hasnât existed until modern times. So it would kind of not make sense to expect to see mega corps in an economic system that doesnât permit the kind of corps we see today.
And I hate to repeat myself, but core principle of capitalism is competition, but competitions inherently have winners. And therefore the freedom you speak of inherently gives rise to mega-corps. They buy each other up and kill off competitors until they become mega-corps.
Any given loser of a competition under capitalism may not immediately die, but each loss forces a company closer and closer to dying.
We unfortunately donât have that though due to inheritance discrepancies, and the burden of entry that corporations put in place through their control of politicians, and through the inherent difficulty of starting a business in an economy as specialized as ours.
For instance if somebody wanted to start up a new business to compete with google, at a minimum they would need several billion dollars to have a reasonable chance of success. Google has such a huge market share and is so well established that it would take decades for any new company to put an actual dent in googleâs market share.
I actually live on the East coast, in a mid to large sized city, I think mine is 3rd in pop for my state. And as for your second bit here, I havenât made anything up.
Majority of citizens living paycheck to paycheck
Housing is increasingly unaffordable with an 18% hike in prices I donât know about you, but my wage has never increased anywhere close to be able to match that. Grocery prices are no different
The retirement age is going up
Sorry, I am a very argumentative person if you couldnât tell already lol
This is another one of the issues that I wish I had more data on, but unfortunately do not. The closest I was able to find was this:
https://www.luisazhou.com/blog/startup-failure-statistics/
And the most frequent cause of failure is lack of cash, which definitely ties into what Iâve been saying.
So this is similar to the drug addiction/true christian inverse correlation that Iâve been talking about in one of the other threads. I know you donât quite agree with the freedom index Iâve been using, but freedom is not in any way correlated with christianity.
Sure, itâs a subjective phrase, and I would personally like to see it added and defined within a new amendment to the constitution, though it probably would never happen
As for an actual definition, a living wage should be defined as a wage that is sufficient to raise a family on, with adequate housing and food. A living wage should be a basic but decent wage for a family.
I would also like to point out that you seem to have missed my point about the lack of freedom through vertical mobility.
I donât think that was the reason, I think the reason was because life was literally simpler and more connected to nature. Also you canât be happy if you canât afford food and shelter.
Iâm not saying a livable wage is one in which you will be able to afford anything fancy. It should be a basic wage, but enough so that you can have a family without worry
This is false. A broad class of competitions do not have winners. Only zero-sum games have winners. The economy is not a zero sum game. Every participant adds value.
Oh yeah? May I introduce you to Gabriel Weinberg, who started a Google competitor in his basement with a $0 investment, which now earns $25 million annually.
Itâs true, but most successful entrepreneurs learn from previous failures, so many of those failed companies generally result in eventual success.
Iâve occasionally thought it would be nice to have a website where anyone could post âbillsâ they wish were actual laws, and other users could vote on them. Itâd be fun. Not that I really think we need any more laws. I just wonder what people would come up with.
Youâd struggle to transform that into a legally reliable definition. Does it include iPads for the kids? How about the cost of pet grooming? Vacations for the whole family to the Bahamas every couple of months? Where exactly do you draw the line? Again, it was commonplace for most people to grow their own food in the not too distant past, and we lived simple lives. Isnât a living wage, then, $0?
I didnât miss it. I just skipped the reply. Because I see plenty of evidence that vertical mobility is alive and well. You can deny it all youâd like, but there are so many rags-to-riches stories. Maybe you donât hear about them much because theyâre mostly Republican.
Jesus could.
Reply to âjust my opinionâ, Part 2 of 2:
My proverbial fresh fruit vendor mentions to me that heâs struggling to keep up with demand, so I tell him I can help him sell his fruit, and Iâll do it for a 15% commission. He bargains me down to 10%, and we have an agreement. He tells me which hours heâs open and I tell him I sell his fruit 24/7. After a few months, he tells me I should wear a more professional looking shirt, and I reply that his sales are up 30% MoM with me running sales, but if he really wants to control my wardrobe Iâll go sell for the competing fruit stand over there. Howâs exactly am I being controlled? Iâm not; Iâm in control of my own labor, selling it at an agreeable rate.
You also mentioned that corporations control politicians. To the degree thatâs true, itâs only because our government is so bloated that corporations are incentivized to do so. If we could stick to the 10th Amendment and return the government to its proper 18th Century size, thereâd be nothing for lobbyists to do. The federal government should be responsible for almost nothing. It should be tiny. Thatâs the root of the problem you blame on corporations. Meanwhile, every leftist continues to push for a bigger and bigger government.
Iâm not sure what the âworld freedom indexâ is, but according to the 2023 Index of Economic Freedom, the US ranks 25 with the following advice:
When I say âsecularismâ, Iâm referring to the social trend of reduced church membership, and the growing trend of people to openly embrace atheism and agnosticism without a hint of shame. Every one of us is either with God or with Satan, and so by secularism I mean the trend of people abandoning God to embrace Satan.
Which is to say, we can really talk past each other sometimes.
What a libertine and hedonistic notion of freedom. It has no basis in history, our culture, or reality, all of which are essentially Christian.
Our cultureâs founding document is built upon a theological proposition:
Our entire culture is built upon that, a theological proposition.
And if you read all of the old American documents, almost all of them include copious quotes from the Bible, which you probably donât even recognize if youâre an atheist. Christianity runs through every fiber of our being as a nation. God is our purpose for being, our purpose for living, and our purpose for freedom. That would not have been a contentious assertion in the past.
Corporations are always incentivized to do so regardless of government size. If youâre a corporation and you have the power to get politicians to get a law passed, then the law gets passed even if the fed is tiny.
The root problem is lobbying (bribery) being legal. Without it we would be in a far better place.
I think the issue of government size is more nuanced than that. There are things that republicans want that would make the government bigger, and there are things that democrats/leftists want that would make it smaller.
There is definitely some regulation that needs to be abandoned, certain zoning laws immediately come to mind, but the largest reason why we have so little freedom here in comparison is because of government surveillance programs, corporate control, etc.
And ranking freedom solely on economic freedom is not a good methodology.
I donât want to make this a debate over definition, but that isnât anywhere close to the definition of secularism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secularism
Atheism and agnosticism is not something to be ashamed about. People should only believe things in which their is sufficient evidence for, and there is insufficient evidence for religion. And atheism is not an embrace of Satan, we atheists donât believe in Satan either.
Iâll refer you to my other post that had quotes from the founding fathers explicitly stating that the U.S. was not founded as a christian nation.
The delcaration of independence is not a legal document or part of american law. Only the constitution is the head of american law and it doesnât say anything about a creator, chrisitianity, etc.
Iâve spent the better part of two decades debating with christians online in various forums, so I have read quite a lot of it at this point.
Reply to âregardless of government sizeâ, part 1 of 2:
A couple of problems that make this incorrect:
So no, corporations are not incentivized to lobby a tiny government which exists strictly to protect the peopleâs liberty, any more than theyâre incentivized to lobby you and me personally.
Except lobbying isnât bribery. Itâs just speech, similar to advertising. I can tell my senator how great the Fediverse is and how he should make an account here, and that would count as lobbying.
The root problem is that the federal government has amassed far too much power. And to break that down, there are mainly two parts to that root problem:
Both have been grossly misinterpreted in violation of the Tenth Amendment to give the federal government unrestricted control over the states. The solution is for SCOTUS to apply the doctrine of originalism to restore these two clauses to their intended meaning. If they have the cahoonas to do that, ~2.87 million federal civilian employees will suddenly be out of a job, and many of our lost freedoms will be restored overnight. Oh yeah, and the incentive to lobby will move to the state level, where governors and state legislatures actually have to worry about losing taxpayers over bad policies.
Sure, well both DNC and RNC are coalitions, and we donât all agree on the details. But my view that the sole responsibility of the federal government is to protect the peopleâs liberty is a fairly generic Republican view. Border protection and national defense are the only expensive requirements of that.
Agreed!
Agreed!
No!
Agreed!
It basically didnât exist in the beginning, I am aware of how drastically things have changed.
When you say ânaturalâ here I assume you mean that the country was intended to always have the same size of federal government (which is to say basically a size of nothing). However the founding fathers intended the country to always be changing and adapting, to always become better and better. I agree that the federal government needs to be smaller (for instance I would personally cut the IRS to a 10th itâs size, because thatâs all they would really need if we switched to georgism). However, just because it needs to be smaller doesnât mean it should barely exist. When our country was founded, it was done so with the Articles of Confederation, and it was a chaotic disaster.
If the government is tiny, then corporations are unfettered, and that is just as bad. But even so, even with a small government, lobbying is still power that they would directly benefit from.
If thatâs all lobbying was, I would be inclined to agree with you, but thatâs not all lobbying is. Paying for campaign contributions, promising contributions, etc are all also legal and considered lobbying. And it is effectively bribery. Itâs also legal to offer politicians lucrative job opportunities. These things are corruption and destroy our freedoms.
I had to go back to keep track of what we agreed(?) was the problem, corporate control. You say it is the two above doctrines, I disagree, believing it is a multifaceted problem of lobbying, monopolies, laizze-faire policy, etc.
I simply donât see how removing the governmentâs ability to regulate commerce would lead to less corporate control of america. Corporations would still control our wages, place of employement, type of employement, hours, how money is distributed, the media (narrative), etc. If anything it would make it harder for the government to prevent these corporations from harming our freedom.
Thatâs progressive revisionism. They most certainly did not. If they were still around today, theyâd be rallying the militia.
You say that like itâs a bad thing. In retrospect itâs clear that our situation then was far preferable to where we are today. The federal governmentâs only problem then was they couldnât get the several states to give them any money, which is a perfectly acceptable problem. Whatâs more, the convention of the states had no authority to discard the Articles, so they remain our rightful federal law. I donât deny the fact that the Constitution is well accepted by almost 100% of American citizens, but the least we can do is restore it to its original intent. If we ever do, though, then youâll find me advocating to restore the Articles.
If government is tiny then businesses are tiny. You can lobby your governor just as you can lobby your next-door neighbor, and thereâs nothing wrong with that. You can lobby me, just as youâre sorta doing now.
This is a symptom of big government. When politicians have next to no power, thereâs no sense in spending money to help them.
I concede I wish I was better at staying on track in this sort of enormous conversation.
Letâs distinguish between state and federal control. I believe itâs a sovereign stateâs role to regulate commerce within their borders as they see fit. So business sizes should vary according to state culture.
Iâve already addressed this. Itâs false. When you sell your labor, you set the price you want to charge, and seek out one or more customers willing to pay that price. Corporations are nothing more than people who pay other people for their labor, as a voluntary agreement between both parties. Neither party controls the other.
This is all radically disconnected from reality. Corporations donât control any of these things. You really should start a business of your own, if for no other reason than just to learn how little power it gives you.
They quite literally built a system in place to add amendments to the constitution and to take them away if needed. Why would they have done so if the intention was to keep the law static until the end of time?
It was. The economy fell apart, the states were constantly squabbling over petty things, we had Shayâs rebellion, the nationâs debts werenât being payed. The currency of the time had no value. Britain was screwing the country over with itâs blockade (which couldnât be solved due to the lack of any federal power). The articles of confederation was such a disaster that it had such a short lived life that the founders themselves got rid of it.
You have no evidence for this, let alone causation.
Politicians have power by definition, and corporations have a direct incentive to get as much power as they can. So there will always be motivation to spend money to bribe them regardless of the power they hold. They might spend less, sure, but they will still do it.
Same. Itâs incredibly difficult.
So states should regulate commerce, but not the federal government, is that what you mean to say? If so, then how would that work out for situations where the regulation/unregualtion in surrounding states impacts a different state? For example, if california legalized weed and had the effect of making weed more available to the surrounding states, how would those surrounding states deal with it?
If everything was small business and there was greater power in the hands of laborers, and if the internet didnât exist then maybe this would be true. But the modern reality is not like that. Corporations set the wage, you apply, and if you tell them you need more money to work there they tell you to get lost*. Job postings receive hundreds, sometimes thousands of applications. Why would they lower their profitability by giving you the wage you set if the next person in the very long line will work just as hard for cheaper?
* I am aware this is less so for higher skill jobs, but most jobs you have very little power in this regard.
Corporations tell their workers what to do and therefore control their workers. Same goes for hours. If I told my boss that I will only work Sundays-Thursdays from now on, I would be fired. That is a form of control.
If I were to start a business it would be a small one and therefore have no control. But again, the problem generally isnât small businesses, itâs the big ones.
They do control each of these things, and I can explain how:
place of employement - Corporations quite literally have been forcing people to return to offices or face dismissal. There are other kinds of this action, but thatâs just one example.
type of employement - Corporations are the one who decide if youâre exempt, non-exempt, a contractor, what the job responsibilities are, etc.
hours - If you refuse to work the hours you are told you are fired.
how money is distributed - At no point does your average worker control this. The higher ups decide this and almost universally decide that the majority should go to them. If businesses were truly democratic, then youâd never see a single company giving a CEO the money for a brand new yacht every year.
the media (narrative) - Virtually all media companies are owned by the rich, and they do not allow news articles and the like to be against them. For example, the Washington Post is owned by Bezos, and youâll never see an article from them criticizing Bezos or Amazon.
Reply to âbuilt a systemâ, part 2 of 2:
Like any market, supply and demand does determine price. If you want to be a forest ranger, youâll be competing against a whole lot of people who like the idea of getting paid to hang out in the forest all day. Youâll get much better pay as a garbage man, since fewer people like the thought of taking that job. But as individuals, we can choose whatever kind of job we want to work, balancing our skills and aptitudes with our personal tastes and how much we value monetary remuneration compared to other measures of job satisfaction. And if youâre clever, you can figure out how to spend all day in the forest and make well over $100k (start a logging company).
Depends on the type of work. Personally I donât care when people work, as long as they show up for meetings and get their jobs done well. But sure, if youâre a gas station attendant then youâd better show up before the start of your shift.
If you like remote work, and your manager doesnât understand that youâre productive working from home, then the jobâs a bad match for you and you should find a better match. Thatâs not anyone having control over the other party; itâs just conflicting values.
Iâve known people to negotiate their status when getting hired. Everythingâs on the table in a negotiation. You just need to recognize it as a negotiation, and learn to negotiate well.
Again, this is very much dependent on the kind of job. Many jobs just require you to get a certain amount of work done.
You lost me here. First off, we wouldnât want a business to be democratic any more than weâd want our country to be. A democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what to eat for supper. Itâs a tragically terrible idea, under almost all circumstances. So no, of course businesses arenât democratic.
If youâve ever tried to hire a CEO (and itâs obvious you havenât), youâd know itâs extremely hard to find someone qualified to do the job well. Again, their compensation is a function of supply and demand. Thereâs almost zero supply. And if you want to be cheap and hire an inexperienced or second-rate CEO, youâre taking a big risk with the life-blood of the company.
With both of those points established, Iâm lost as to your overall point about how money is distributed. You get a paycheck or direct deposit. Some businesses pay cash. A few will pay in bitcoin or other cryptocurrency. You donât seem to be discussing any of these things, but theyâre how money is distributed.
Yes, well thatâs true if weâre only discussing the mass media. Most of the conservative media outlets are tiny operations.
But thatâs not evidence that companies seek power over people. Itâs just evidence that the personality type of journalists tends to be leftist, and while thatâs not true of all journalists, theyâve banded together with like-minded people.
Even in the worst case examples, big tech silencing conservatives, which is a very real problem with examples far too numerous to count (Why do my mailings from Team DeSantis keep going to spam, no matter how many times I click ânot spamâ?), thatâs not corporations trying to control people. Itâs just employees with personal political preferences who work alongside like-minded people, and who believe theyâre making the world a better place.
Reply to âbuilt a systemâ, part 1 of 2:
They also made it remarkably difficult to amend. They wouldnât have done that if they thought it should frequently change.
I understand the frustrations, though those points are a biased history. I donât think the founders would have abandoned the Articles if they could have foreseen the behemoth they created in its place. But indeed they did, and honestly Iâd be okay with it if weâd just stick to their original design.
The singular goal of the American republic is to limit the power of politicians. Thatâs basically what the Constitutionâs all about.
Corporations do not seek power. They seek sales. And they gain sales by offering goods and services that people want more than their own money. Itâs not having power over someone to sell them something they love.
Affirmative.
States make agreements with their neighbors, much like reciprocity for CCW licenses. Indeed the whole Union is meant to pretty much be a coalition, so if South America were to invade Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, for instance, the rest of the states are supposed to send their militias south to help defend the border. If Oregon legalized marijuana and Idaho didnât (to use a real-life example of bordering states), then LEOs in Idaho can look a bit more suspiciously at people with Oregon plates, and possibly pull them over and see what they smell. A more extreme solution would be to erect border checkpoints to conduct ârandomâ searches.
But reality is like that. Have a look here. I want to copy and paste the whole page.
Reply to âregardless of government sizeâ, part 2 of 2:
I was all ready to reply that the wiki article has been biased by secularists, but then I read it (well, I skimmed the beginning of it), and it seems largely agreeable, and supports my personal definition. The social trend of reduced church membership, and the growing trend of people to openly embrace atheism and agnosticism without a hint of shame, are both completely in line with people âseeking to conduct human affairs based on naturalistic considerations, uninvolved with religion.â The article also notes that:
Thatâs awkward wording, but does indeed agree with my personal definition.
I know you believe Satan doesnât exist. Youâre in complete denial of the massive influence he has over you.
Youâre either with God or youâre against Him. Thatâs a really important concept that you seem to keep ignoring. When you reject God, you embrace Satan â even if youâre unaware that youâre doing so â and even if you think thatâs impossible â thatâs what youâre doing. And that most certainly is something to be ashamed about.
As for evidence, once you accept Christ, you will finally understand that abundant evidence is everywhere you look.
âŠwhich I rebutted. I wonder if youâre missing some of my replies. (Edit: maybe I rebutted it after you wrote this.)
Itâs the primary document to establish our culture and our national identity. I canât overemphasize that point. When was the last time you read it?
Do you suppose your motivation to do that was provided by God or Satan? (âNeitherâ would be an invalid answer.)
I donât think they match, but again definitions arenât really why I am here, so I will move on.
When you say âcomplete denialâ, do you mean the kind of denial of that secretly knows some unfortunate truth, or literally denying? Because if it is the former you are mistaken.
Thatâs because I donât think it makes sense. I donât believe in either of the sides you are talking about. So itâs kind of like asking âare you rooting for team A or team Bâ, but the sports teams* that youâre talking about are all fictional. It just doesnât make sense for me to say I am on a sports team that I think is made up.
* I know they arenât sports teams, but I couldnât think of a better analogy.
Iâm embracing neither. I canât embrace something I donât believe in.
I know you donât think I was ever a christian, but when I was, I thought I had abundant evidence. But the closer I looked at my reasons for believing the more I realized they werenât good reasons.
I think trying to single out a single document that defines a 246 year old country is a mistake, because no such document could possibly define such a long and chaotic history/country.
This question is not relevant to the conversation, as it is just setting up for an ad hominem fallacy.
Iâm sorry but the answer is âneitherâ whether you consider it valid or not. I am not a christian and therefore not bound to âchristian logicâ so to speak that would say that such a dichotomy is valid. My motivations are my own to the extent that an american can.
Definitions are so important! Oftentimes we talk past each other, thinking weâre arguing when we actually agree on 95% of the issue, but weâre using different working definitions of our words, and misinterpreting each other accordingly.
I have no background in psychology, but I donât think denial necessarily involves secret knowledge. I just went to research the topic, and quickly remembered that I dislike the entire field of psychology, so I didnât get far. Sorry. But no, I donât pretend to know what you really know and what you donât. Thatâs between you and God, not me. I just think youâve intentionally decided to refute God, and thereby unknowingly invited Satan to guide your thoughts.
Thatâs a good analogy, and I understand your perspective. But the problem is that good and evil are entirely real, and itâs absurd to pretend theyâre not. Youâre ignoring the spiritual warfare that underlies everything happening in our world, in our lives, and indeed in this very conversation. Youâre denying the foundational tenets of Western Civilization, based on millennia of correspondence with and guidance from the Lord our God. You arrogantly pretending youâre somehow smarter than our ancestors who built this civilization with Godâs blessing, and whatâs far worse is youâre arrogantly pretending youâre somehow smarter than God Almighty Himself. Thatâs why I say youâre in denial. God does not like to be denied. But the Devil does, and seizes upon that denial to manipulate you.
âVerbal Kint
But you can, and you do. When you deny God, you embrace Satan. There is no third option.
I find that completely believable. You predicated your faith on faulty reasoning, and as a result, your faith was unstable. Solid faith cannot be predicated on reasons at all â thatâs what makes it faith. But when your faith is solid, youâre then provided with the ability to see the abundant evidence for what it truly is. The key is that the evidence comes second, contingent on faith.
Iâd say thatâs reasonable if I wasnât familiar with the US. But every child memorizes key lines from that single document, and learns all about how it made us the greatest country on earth. And every American refers back to it in common parlance, while discussing and debating a wide variety of issues. And that single document continues to influence all of our legislation and jurisprudence. So in the case of the US, that single document really does define our culture.
Itâs worth noting, though, that you mention that weâre a 246 year old country, and itâs 247 (welcome to 2023!), but more importantly Iâd say most of what happened during those intervening years are far less important than what happened at the outset. Even if our state and federal governments were to topple, and a foreign army was to invade, American flags would still fly because our national character was established at the outset of our founding, and it cannot be destroyed.
Out of curiosity, if it wouldnât be invasive, which state are you in (or from, or most familiar with)?
Definitions are also defined by the way in which the majority of people use them. The word âyeetâ was utter nonsense until enough people understood the word and its meaning to land itself a spot in dictionaries.
So I hesitate to argue over definitions, because there is an âobjectiveâ answer so to speak, and from what I can tell you seem to use completely different definitions from the norm. So I donât see much point in talking about it.
I hate to repeat myself but this goes pretty close along the lines of what I said in one of the other threads, and that is that beliefs as I understand them are not a choice. So it simply doesnât make sense to say somebody has intentionally decided to refute god. Just as I cannot choose to become christian, you cannot choose to become muslim. We can choose what ideas we are exposed to and that can have an effect on us, but it is indirect at most.
I know a lot of christians understand god to be good itself and satan to be the opposite, but thatâs not really how I see it. Sure, good and evil exist but they are human concepts, human labels that we ascribe to actions. They arenât literal entities that exist. I am not pretending good and evil donât exist. They exist just as much as friendship does. It isnât anything physical or some being, itâs a human label.
So be it. If there are problems with the foundation of western civilization then there ought to be changes to fix the problems. There used to be a time when western civilization permitted slavery (and technically still does), so why would I treat it as perfect?
Humans stand on the shoulders of our ancestors through our ability to transfer knowledge from one generation to the next. Couple that with our ability to analyze history and hind sight, and itâs very easy to discover flaws of the past. I am not saying or pretending I am smarter than previous generations because you donât need to be to discover such flaws. To put it in an analogy, I play chess a lot and have a friend who is significantly smarter than me at it. He beats me basically every time. However, when he makes a mistake in the game I still have (on occasion) the ability to discover it, and very occasionally beat him. Yet I never say or pretend I am smarter than him.
I canât say I am smarter than something I donât believe exists.
The third option is that these beings simply do not exist.
And therefore I want none of it.
Too much has happened in our country for that to be true.
Whoops! I should have paid slightly more attention to my google search result.
Iâd rather not say at the risk of doxing myself, but Iâll say I am from the north east coast.
If you ask a hundred people for the definition of any word, youâll get a hundred different definitions. Sure theyâll be similar, but no two will likely be identical. Usually we assume similar is good enough. But when we disagree over a contentious topic, it can help to define our terms because they may be radically dissimilar.
For many such terms, the political Right and Left will both use their own flavor of definitions which are quite different from the other sideâs. I suspect thatâs what youâre observing when you say my definitions are different from the norm. Itâs all too easy to think we disagree when in fact we mostly agree but are defining words differently.
I chose to become a Christian. Nobody found me and convinced me. I sought it out, learned about it, read the Bible, and accepted Jesus. It was totally a choice. And whatâs more, Iâd say I repeatedly choose to be a Christian every time I struggle, every time my faith is tested, and every time I slip and sin. I turn to Christ and ask for forgiveness, again and again, and every time I choose to be Christian. Of course itâs a choice, and you choose too.
Yes, they are human concepts, and yes these two concepts are distinct from the literal entities of God and Satan. But where do you think the two human concepts came from? Adam and Eve had to reflect on their expulsion, and conceive of concepts to describe the situation. So we all do, as we go through life. Just as the word âphotosynthesisâ describes a human concept which describes a real phenomenon, so true good and evil are predicated on our experiences contending with literal entities.
I give you credit for at least admitting it. So often it seems like leftists are following a program to destroy western civilization, but Iâm pretty sure this is the first time Iâve witnessed an admission of your willingness to do so.
Listen, our politics are different, reflecting our different personal values, experiences, and understandings of the world. As a conservative, my raison dâĂȘtre is to preserve Western Civilization (AKA Christendom). In all of our messages, most (all?) of what Iâve written comes down to that. To my view, itâs crucial and nonnegotiable. Everything we have of any value at all comes from Western Civilization. Itâs destruction can result in nothing more than the fulfillment of end-times prophecy.
I understand your perspective. But I also know we frequently think the past is flawed just because we donât understand it. Similar to how teens believe they know so much more than their parents, only to realize years later that they were wrong about pretty much everything.
Why do you suppose ancient people were overall more religious than people today? When we look up at night, we see light pollution. Most of us have no clue what our own sky looks like. When we look out of our windows, most of us see buildings, cement, infrastructure, people, vehicles, and maybe a few landscaped trees and lawns. Most of us have no clue what our planet naturally looks like. Maybe we visit a national park and snap a few photos for Instagram just to prove we were there.
Ancient peoples saw Godâs handiwork everywhere they looked, and it was breathtakingly jaw-dropping and truly awesome. We live in a world where weâve built all of these things to constantly blind us from that. We have absolutely no idea, on average, what our own world looks like. Platoâs Allegory of the Cave is what weâve built all around ourselves. Our only hope of knowing truth is to look to God, and read His wisdom and knowledge passed down to us from the ancients: the Bible.
If you see a mistake, itâs probable youâre evaluating an illusion.
Youâre fortunate to have a chess partner. I havenât had one in ages. I miss playing it.