Sports writer kills himself, leaves behind website describing how and why

Tanoomba

Tanoomba

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Lithose_sl said:
So how do you rationalize the fact that the world was far more brutal and "cold" before capitalism? Capitalism did not create this condition, rather it was formed to respond to it. It was born from an era where people were abused, died and horribly mistreated because of a family name or some connection to a mythical deity gave the monopoly of violence to some random jack ass. The fact is, and this is something even Marx admitted to--capitalism raised the standard of living in nearly every country it was implemented in. There were radical improvements in almost every metric of quality of life.
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Hey, Capitalism did a fantastic job helping us evolve, it really did. But it was a stepping stone that has since become obsolete. The negative impact it's having on society is now much stronger than the positive it could once take much credit for. Capitalism was great because it allowed us to tap into the best of what people could do. It's also maximized our ability to abuse any power for maximum gain, regardless of the consequences. We're now lucky enough to live at a time where all the amazing progress we've made in so many fields could solve all our problems many times over, but we're not allowing this progress to occur because it conflicts with what we've decided is "the way things are done".

Lithose_sl said:
This rise in quality, in fact, is needed in order to reach Marx's utopia, in fact. This is another thing he readily admits to. The only way to form a good socialist base (Which can evolve into communism) is the higher productivity and social equality in Capitalism (Note I said higher--because as bad as capitalism's social equality can be, it's leaps and bounds better than the systems before it.)
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We'll see higher productivity and social equalitywithoutcapitalism than we ever will by clinging to it.

Lithose_sl said:
Capitalism didn't "bury" our true nature. It merely understood out true naturewhenwe have to deal withresource scarcity. When there isn't enough to go around, we tend to be very terrible, we are brutal, cold and will disenfranchise the weak in order to reduce scarcity. Capitalism accepted that as a truth and channeled it into higher productivity by created a political-economic system that offered abstracted reward structure that controlled the normal violent byproducts of that nature and allowed for innovation and a far more fluid social mobility (Though, it's obviously got major flaws--but it IS vastly superior to systems before). If anything, Capitalism brought us one step closer to your view of human nature--and again, even Marx admits this (Capitalism is a step on his progression to Communism). However, it's only a step because as long as there is scarcity, people will be this way. That's not something Capitalism is forcing on us, it's always be present. That's why the Romans had slaves, it's why the feudal lords were assholes and why the Mongols took everyone's stuff--because people, at their core, are bad when they feel they are forced to be.
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As always, you're not saying anything I can disagree with. But see, whether or not capitalism is better than all the systems that came before is irrelevant when considering whether we can do a lot better without it now. We can measure, with greater accuracy than we could have ever imagined, the amount of damage we are causing to the planet and its inhabitants in every quantifiable sense (loss of human life, extinctions of species, pollution of water, etc). We can also measure how best to use the resources at our disposal to better the planet as a whole, but we're not being allowed to do so because we have some pre-assumed responsibility towards the rich guys who make all our decisions for us.

Lithose_sl said:
And really? "Bad" is only a perspective we view. This type of behavior in nature wouldn't be considered bad. Look at what a lion does to opposing cubs, even if he's currently mating with their mother. Nature is a cruel bitch, and we are her children. Capitalism isn't burying our "angelic inner peace", it's burying the brutal asshole that would instantly appear if he saw his children were going hungry. That "super happy" human nature you're describing only comes when people don't want anymore. Which is why people did think Marx was visionary--because he imagined that future. But a post scarcity society? It's REALLY hard to fathom. All of human existence has been defined by scarcity, heck, all of living existence on earth has been defined by it. It's the driving force of evolution, even.
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Sure. But all it takes is for everyone to realize it's all bullshit. We don't have to accept that our allegiance to money (an artificially created scarcity) is any more significant than our supposed allegiance to the idea that "people just have to die anyway, so we might as well take an active hand in it". Everything you've described explains in great detail how we got to where we are, but in never takes into account our ability to reflect on that process itself and recognize that we can interact with it and therefore skew it towards benefiting the greatest number of people for the longest amount of time.
 
D

Dumar_sl

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hodj_sl said:
But you said that can't happen in other species. Its uniquely human, right?

Right?
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You're confused again.Commodificationis what I've been talking about, which if you haven't been paying attention or don't know, is the transformation of something or some relationship into having an ascribed market value. What economic value didn't exist beforehand now does and replaces any other. It's thetransformation.

There is no transformation of social relationships into economic ones in chimps: fucking has always been about more alpha bananas based on biological imperative. The concept ofmaking loveorprostitutionhowever, are not the same type of relationship.

Selling your body is a form of commodification. The chimp's imperative is to reproduce, while the whore selling her ass does it for a different purpose. One is commodified experience, while the other isn't. I hope that makes sense. I'll explain more in my bigger post later. In the meantime, go to class.
 
hodj

hodj

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Dumar_sl said:
You're confused again.Commodificationis what I've been talking about, which if you haven't been paying attention or don't know, is the transformation of something or some relationship into having an ascribed market value.
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Yeah that's exactly what female chimpanzees are doing. There is a market for access to their sexual favors that costs a price in fruit.

There is no transformation of social relationships into economic ones in chimps: fucking has always been about more alpha bananas based on biological imperative. The concept of making love or prostitution however, are not the same type of relationship.
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Again your premise would benefit from some basic research, chimpanzees do make love, and do engage in prostitution. That's the point. And the very fact that females are selling access to their sexuality for access to resources completely demolishes your trite argument that this is a human exclusive phenomena.



Selling your body is a form of commodification. The chimp's imperative is to reproduce, while the whore selling her ass does it for a different purpose.
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Chimpanzees sell sex for protection and access to resources, not for reproduction exclusively. Again. You no know no researchy, so you no know this to be the case.
 
TrollfaceDeux

TrollfaceDeux

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Dumar_sl said:
You're confused again.Commodificationis what I've been talking about, which if you haven't been paying attention or don't know, is the transformation of something or some relationship into having an ascribed market value. What economic value didn't exist beforehand now does and replaces any other. It's thetransformation.
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transformation. TRANSFORMATIONNN....Do you science?
 
fanaskin

fanaskin

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dumars just mad that somebody put a pricetag on something is what it is basically, he wanted it for free instead.

However somebody usually has to work to make that thing dumar which is the thing you keep missing. Because he's butt hurt that he has to pay for that thing he'd rather reorganize society to compel that same person to do that same thing for free or really cheaply instead, without really being being compensated for it.

like I've said before communism can work when we all have robot slaves.
 
D

Dumar_sl

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hodj_sl said:
Again your premise would benefit from some basic research, chimpanzees do make love, and do engage in prostitution. That's the point. And the very fact that females are selling access to their sexuality for access to resources completely demolishes your trite argument that this is a human exclusive phenomena.
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I'm not quite sure what your definition of making love is with regards to that video, but I'll address the prostitution.

The chimpanzees are not 'selling' access to their body in the same way a prostitute is selling access to hers. The chimp'sunconscious imperativeis to reproduce. This imperative has existed since chimps existed, and it will continue to exist. Play-fucking or whatever that was is no different.

Commodification is a transformation of a thing or activity into a market object. There is no transformation here because the same biological imperative has always existed. The whore is not following any imperative to reproduce or play-fuck, while the chimps are.

I hope that's clear.
 
TrollfaceDeux

TrollfaceDeux

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Dumar_sl said:
I'm not quite sure what your definition of making love is with regards to that video, but I'll address the prostitution.

The chimpanzees are not 'selling' access to their body in the same way a prostitute is selling access to hers. The chimp'sunconscious imperativeis to reproduce. This imperative has existed since chimps existed, and it will continue to exist. Play-fucking or whatever that was is no different.
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Do we not have the same imperative? Are our behaviours reflective of all conscious choices? Why do men like sex? Because they do? Come on now.
 
hodj

hodj

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Dumar_sl said:
I'm not quite sure what your definition of making love is with regards to that video, but I'll address the prostitution.

The chimpanzees are not 'selling' access to their body in the same way a prostitute is selling access to hers. The chimp'sunconscious imperativeis to reproduce. This imperative has existed since chimps existed, and it will continue to exist. Play-fucking or whatever that was is no different.

Commodification is a transformation of a thing or activity into a market object. There is no transformation here because the same biological imperative has always existed. The whore is not following any imperative to reproduce or play-fuck, while the chimps are.

I hope that's clear.
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Lol this is a ridiculous argument. You could make the EXACT SAME ARGUMENT that ultimately, female human prostitutes SUBCONSCIOUS goal is to reproduce. Give us a break. You've stretched your analogy too far and now its falling apart and you're just throwing whatever you can at the wall to salvage some merit from a bad argument. Chimpanzees are 98% exactly the same as we are genetically, Dumar. Like it or not, homology between cultural exchanges is a relevant and very observably real phenomena, unlike the theoreticals you operate from.

Taking fruit and using it to gain more access to sexual favors is the exact foundation of the activity you decry. This is why your insistence that history and evolution and biology don't matter is so profoundly flawed, and why Marx can't possibly be the answer to all life's mysteries, because he, like you, doesn't take any of it into account, because he, unlike you, wasn't fortunate enough to live in a world of modern research and results.

There is no transformation here because the same biological imperative has always existed. The whore is not following any imperative to reproduce or play-fuck, while the chimps are.
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Citation fucking required like the flaming fist of the north star. Because, in fact, both activities are exactly the same.
 
TrollfaceDeux

TrollfaceDeux

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come on dumar bro. Let's assume whores are not following any imperative. What about men that WANT it?
 
Lithose

Lithose

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Tanoomba_sl said:
The negative impact it's having on society is now much stronger than the positive it could once take much credit for.

Everything you've described explains in great detail how we got to where we are, but in never takes into account our ability to reflect on that process itself and recognize that we can interact with it and therefore skew it towards benefiting the greatest number of people for the longest amount of time.
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Just snipping this last part because it epitomizes the post. The post was only refuting your point that Capitalism makes us worse. It most certainly doesnotmake us "worse" overall than how we were in history and it does not make us worse than any system which has thus far been implemented currently. That is not saying that therecouldn'tbe better systems but all systems can be improved upon, saying that is as silly as as rational reduction through the statement of "why". Capitalism itself has gone through multiple, highly deviated iterations that have had varying levels of success and failure, which is why the statement painted a picture of how it's improved us from previous social systems--and not a treatise on how it's the ultimate evolution of political economy.

I will say though, Tan. Some of your statements likeWe'll see higher productivity and social equality without capitalism than we ever will by clinging to itsound pretty silly. I've studied economics for quite a while and I'd never be confident enough to say that's we'd see higher productivity outside of Capitalism. Could we? Sure. Various European markets with planned or social capitalistic economies do very well from a productivity standpoint, for example and that's what a lot of people tend to point to. What they don't understand is 1.) Those systems use Capitalism (Which kind of puts their argument on its head). 2.) How those systems prey upon the weaker economies of the South by preventing fiat manipulation in an economic system that almost requires it for countries to remain competitive (For example.) or other variables like how being oil wealthy affects things.

What we know right now is that the most successful markets use a mixture, some kind of mixture, ofCapitalism. There is no evidence that production will climb without it. None. Absolutely none. But there are thousands of in depth papers, peer reviewed, statistically sound papers that show Capitalism tends to breed productivity when implemented in certain ways (And can be destructive when not, very, very destructive in fact.) But it brings us back to....Why you're confident things will be better of without it? You have absolutely no reason to be. History shows us things were vastly shittier before it. Modernity shows us that even the best systems still use it (Again with varying degrees of socialism). So what gives you that confidence?

Again, it's kind of silly--the reason the post pointed towards history, is because that's what we have to compare it to. Even modernity doesn't give us a clear example of a post-capitalistic society functioning long term. What we know now, is it's better than anything else we've managed to do,ever.
 
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