Thursday, December 2, 2010

Why Simplicity? A Complex Answer, Part II


Wonderworks Girls
Originally uploaded by paynehollow
Continuing looking at the question, Why Simplicity, I'd like us to consider the justice aspect of great diversity in wealth and poverty. I'd like us to consider Dr. Martin Luther King's words on this matter today...

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway.

True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just."

The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood...

Powerful (even dangerous) words, those, but well worth consideration.

As Christians and decent people the world over are concerned about living just lives, we owe it to ourselves to at least ask the questions: Is this way of life just? Is this disparity of wealth just? Does it lead to war? To environmental and societal destruction? Is there a corallary between the great wealth of one nation and the great poverty of another?

Having answered these questions, what "revolution of values," as Dr. King calls it, do we need? What changes in our values and lives ought to follow? Or do we do nothing and continue as the wealthy elite of the world with a clean conscience?

This final clarification for today: Just because King or I might believe we need a revolution of values, a restructuring of the social order, is not to say we are calling for Marxist communism. It is, rather (at least in my estimation), just what it is: A call for a revolution of values, a questioning of how and how much we consume, a consideration of the poor and marginalized recognizing our great wealth. Perhaps an old time revival, to put it in religious parlance. That is not, to be clear, a call for Marxism. At least not for me and mine.

Just trying to nip that misunderstanding in the bud.

38 comments:

Geoffrey Kruse-Safford said...

Well, Dan, I am quite sure that you and I and many others will be called commies despite your best efforts to argue otherwise.

I just would like to note that this position of King's, which I first encountered as a teenager, is so much a part of my own thinking, that I found myself speaking the whole quote aloud without looking at the screen. King's insistence that justice dictates a revolution of values does not mean we do not help the poor. That, obviously, is a false choice. We are grown-ups. We do both, and sometimes by reaching down and lifting another to stand on his or her two feet is the first step in that long march to freedom for all of us.

John said...

This final clarification for today: Just because King or I might believe we need a revolution of values, a restructuring of the social order, is not to say we are calling for Marxist communism. It is, rather (at least in my estimation), just what it is: A call for a revolution of values, a questioning of how and how much we consume, a consideration of the poor and marginalized recognizing our great wealth. Perhaps an old time revival, to put it in religious parlance. That is not, to be clear, a call for Marxism. At least not for me and mine.

Just trying to nip that misunderstanding in the bud.


Just as long as there's no use of force involved -- that any action toward this vision of justice is entirely voluntary by each individual involved -- then it's not Marxism. Or any other flavor of tyranny.

John said...

Is this disparity of wealth just? Does it lead to war? To environmental and societal destruction? Is there a corallary between the great wealth of one nation and the great poverty of another?

Disparity of wealth does not worry me. Poverty does. Be mindful of any assumption (which you may or may not be making) that if one man is rich, it is at the expense of the man that is poor; that wealth is a pie of fixed size that must be divided among the people of the world. The pie can be grown through free market capitalism.

Geoffrey Kruse-Safford said...

John wrote: "The pie can be grown through free market capitalism."

Except, that isn't working, and it never has, John. Check this out. Half the country - half, fifty percent, 150 million people - own a combined total of . . . 2% of the nation's wealth. One percent of the population - that would be three million people - own 70%.

If you look at this chart, you will see that this has not always been the case. Only since the advent of widespread advocacy by political and economic elites that it might be true - the past thirty years or so - has the share of wealth by the wealthiest increased.

So, as a matter of simple fact, your statement is wrong. Does this mean that the only alternative is Marxism? Obviously not. It does mean we need to accept reality, rather than the fantasy fed us by the folks who are winning the rat race.

John said...

Geoffrey,

I'm not denying that there's income disparity, or that it's increased. I'm saying that "share" is not a fixed quantity. The GDP of the US in 1960 was $520,531,200,000. It's currently $13,201,820,000,000. The pie grew. If a person's slice of that pie shrank, it doesn't necessarily mean that he got poorer.

Wealth can be measured objectively. Here are a few suggestions for criteria that we could use: lifespan, infant mortality, square footage of homes, and access to consumer goods and services (e.g. indoor plumbing, cable TV).

If my neighbor builds a huge house with gold plated furnishings and a garage filled with luxury cars, while I continue to drive my Toyota and live in my apartment, I haven't actually gotten any poorer. Sure, he's now richer than I am. But my size of my home hasn't decreased, my life hasn't shortened, and my access to food hasn't diminished. I'm simply not poorer as a result of his increase in wealth.

In The Once and Future King, T.H. White expressed that a knight with a silver suit of armor would immediately identify himself as a 'have not' if he met a knight with a golden suit of armor.

Dan is proposing that we embrace a lifestyle of simplicity. Perhaps I've misunderstood him, but there seems to be a contradiction between this notion and encouraging people to be envious of the wealth of their neighbors. It would be more consistent to ask "What do I need?" rather than "What do I now want because my neighbors have one?" It would seem that Dan's purpose is better served by examining objective measures of wealth (listed above) rather than the relative measure of wealth (income disparity).

Everything is amazing and nobody's happy.

John said...

Geoffrey,

I'm not denying that there's income disparity, or that it's increased. I'm saying that "share" is not a fixed quantity. The GDP of the US in 1960 was $520,531,200,000. It's currently $13,201,820,000,000. The pie grew. If a person's slice of that pie shrank, it doesn't necessarily mean that he got poorer.

Wealth can be measured objectively. Here are a few suggestions for criteria that we could use: lifespan, infant mortality, square footage of homes, and access to consumer goods and services (e.g. indoor plumbing, cable TV).

If my neighbor builds a huge house with gold plated furnishings and a garage filled with luxury cars, while I continue to drive my Toyota and live in my apartment, I haven't actually gotten any poorer. Sure, he's now richer than I am. But my size of my home hasn't decreased, my life hasn't shortened, and my access to food hasn't diminished. I'm simply not poorer as a result of his increase in wealth.

In The Once and Future King, T.H. White expressed that a knight with a silver suit of armor would immediately identify himself as a 'have not' if he met a knight with a golden suit of armor.

Dan is proposing that we embrace a lifestyle of simplicity. Perhaps I've misunderstood him, but there seems to be a contradiction between this notion and encouraging people to be envious of the wealth of their neighbors. It would be more consistent to ask "What do I need?" rather than "What do I now want because my neighbors have one?" It would seem that Dan's purpose is better served by examining objective measures of wealth (listed above) rather than the relative measure of wealth (income disparity).

Everything is amazing and nobody's happy.

Geoffrey Kruse-Safford said...

John wrote: "If a person's slice of that pie shrank, it doesn't necessarily mean that he got poorer."
GDP is not national wealth. It is a measure of the output of goods and services. So, you are talking about apples and I am talking about oranges, we aren't both talking about pies.

Furthermore, the rise in income disparity is precisely the issue. It is grotesque, to be blunt, that an allegedly advanced, industrial, self-proclaimed Christian nation has created a situation in which half our population sustains itself on just two percent of the total wealth of the nation. I have no idea how old you are, John, but the rapid increase in income disparity has occurred in my ADULT lifetime. I am only 45, and I remember that we had a robust, healthy, thriving economy, with all sorts of hustle and bustle when taxation was more progressive, and a larger percentage of the population shared more of the national wealth.

So, I'm sorry. I know it hurts to have one's cherished ideas shown to be quite clearly wrong. But they are. Lower regulation, more regressive taxes at lower rates, union-busting - all these tactics that are supposed to release economic energy have actually created the situation in which we find ourselves today - our craptastic, stagnant economy, stuck because we continue to listen to people who insist that the magic economy fairy will come along with the golden apple if we just all wish hard enough and clap our hands.

Dan Trabue said...

John, thanks for your thoughts. But where you say...

that if one man is rich, it is at the expense of the man that is poor; that wealth is a pie of fixed size that must be divided among the people of the world. The pie can be grown through free market capitalism.

My poor undereducated first thought would be to be mindful of any assumption that states the pie can always be grown through any means.

We are a finite world. Free market capitalism (for any of its real world good qualities) is not magic. It can't produce another trillion gallons of oil when oil has all been used up. It can't produce magically clean rivers when they have been contaminated woefully. There is a finite amount of water, food, natural resources available. In that sense, our economy (which is a subset of our finite ecology) is not an endlessly enlarging pie.

I just can't see reasonably putting too much stock in that assumption.

Dan Trabue said...

John...

Perhaps I've misunderstood him, but there seems to be a contradiction between this notion and encouraging people to be envious of the wealth of their neighbors.

Allow me to clarify: I've never intentionally encouraged anyone to be envious of another's wealth. God forbid! If anything, I'm sympathetic to those entrapped by their wealth. I lean towards imagining "gold" as that which only weighs one down whilst trying to swim through life. Too much of it and you drown.

Encourage folk to be envious of wealth and stuff? No, sir. I'm encouraging simplicity (for myself) for the joy of letting go of stuff and hopefully as another model of how to live happily with less.

John said...

Geoffrey wrote:

GDP is not national wealth. It is a measure of the output of goods and services. So, you are talking about apples and I am talking about oranges, we aren't both talking about pies.

Okay, how do you propose that we measure national wealth?


Furthermore, the rise in income disparity is precisely the issue. It is grotesque, to be blunt, that an allegedly advanced, industrial, self-proclaimed Christian nation has created a situation in which half our population sustains itself on just two percent of the total wealth of the nation. I have no idea how old you are, John, but the rapid increase in income disparity has occurred in my ADULT lifetime. I am only 45, and I remember that we had a robust, healthy, thriving economy, with all sorts of hustle and bustle when taxation was more progressive, and a larger percentage of the population shared more of the national wealth.


I see no reason to worry about income disparity, when by objective standards, poverty has been reduced.

So, I'm sorry. I know it hurts to have one's cherished ideas shown to be quite clearly wrong. But they are. Lower regulation, more regressive taxes at lower rates, union-busting - all these tactics that are supposed to release economic energy have actually created the situation in which we find ourselves today - our craptastic, stagnant economy, stuck because we continue to listen to people who insist that the magic economy fairy will come along with the golden apple if we just all wish hard enough and clap our hands.

What? When have we tried them? Be specific.

John said...

My poor undereducated first thought would be to be mindful of any assumption that states the pie can always be grown through any means.

We are a finite world. Free market capitalism (for any of its real world good qualities) is not magic. It can't produce another trillion gallons of oil when oil has all been used up. It can't produce magically clean rivers when they have been contaminated woefully. There is a finite amount of water, food, natural resources available. In that sense, our economy (which is a subset of our finite ecology) is not an endlessly enlarging pie.

I just can't see reasonably putting too much stock in that assumption.


Then please explain how GDP has increased massively, rather than decreased.

Dan Trabue said...

Well, I'm no economist and it all sounds a bit like voodoo to me, so consider the source. But seems to me that GDP is a poor representation of a nation's economic health. As I'm sure you've seen pointed out, if divorces, disasters and destruction increase, GDP will go up. What of it? Does that mean we're doing well economically? No, I don't think so.

John said...

Dan wrote:

Encourage folk to be envious of wealth and stuff? No, sir. I'm encouraging simplicity (for myself) for the joy of letting go of stuff and hopefully as another model of how to live happily with less.

Then why are you so concerned about relative wealth rather than objective wealth?

The poor man in America today has access to air conditioning, refrigerated food, and polio vaccination. 100 years ago, even the wealthiest of men lacked such wonders.

Would you not agree that, objectively speaking, poverty has diminished in America in the last 100 years?

John said...

Dan wrote:

But seems to me that GDP is a poor representation of a nation's economic health.

Okay, how about infant mortality? Life expectancy? Access to indoor plumbing? Access to electricity?

John said...

Dan wrote:

We are a finite world. Free market capitalism (for any of its real world good qualities) is not magic. It can't produce another trillion gallons of oil when oil has all been used up. It can't produce magically clean rivers when they have been contaminated woefully. There is a finite amount of water, food, natural resources available. In that sense, our economy (which is a subset of our finite ecology) is not an endlessly enlarging pie.

And yet people keep finding new ways of extracting materials and using them in creative ways.

200 years ago, petroleum wasn't considered a natural resource. Now it is! We started finding all sorts of ways to use it. We found ways of extracting it that we couldn't do before.

The pie is getting larger. Not because the earth is getting larger, but because materials are moving from the "useless" category to the "useful" category all the time.

That's why people have more stuff. (Have you noticed that people have so much stuff now?) If wealth is a fixed quantity, as you suggest, this simply wouldn't be possible. As more people are born, we would get increasingly poorer. We aren't. The US population doubled in the last 70 years. Do you have half the stuff your grandparents did?

History again and again disproves your model.

Geoffrey Kruse-Safford said...

John, the percentage of the American people that live below the poverty level has increased steadily over the same period of which I am writing. That is, again, a fact. It has increased faster when there has been little resistance to precisely the kind of ideology you believe is such a boon to all.

Dan, I do like you saying that your not sure how a pie can grow. Cute, and nice touch.

John said...

Geoffrey wrote:

John, the percentage of the American people that live below the poverty level has increased steadily over the same period of which I am writing. That is, again, a fact.

By all means, let's discuss this statistical event. To begin: please define the term "poverty level".

John said...

Geoffrey,

I've asked you a couple questions. When you have time, I'd appreciate answers. They are:

1. Okay, how do you propose that we measure national wealth?

2. What? When have we tried them? Be specific.

Geoffrey Kruse-Safford said...

This is GDP. This is national wealth. Get it?

This is the poverty level.

See? I even did your homework for you.

John said...

Thanks!

Now on what basis are you arguing that the national wealth of the United States, as defined by the Taiwanese government, has declined?

So you've linked to the poverty guidelines for 2009. The problem with this standard is that it changes every single year.

If I say "Dan weighs 170 pounds" one year and the next "Dan weighs 175 pounds", but in the meantime I've changed the definition of the word "pound", then I haven't told you anything at all. This is the same problem federal poverty guidelines. The standard keeps moving around.

Here are statistics about the poor based on more objective criteria:

Food and Nutrition. In the early 1960s, inadequate caloric intake was hardly unusual among the officially defined poor. By the end of the century, however, the proportion of the adult population between twenty and seventy-four who were underweight (defined as a body mass index below 18.5) dropped from 4 percent to 1.9 percent.

By the same token, nutritional deprivation among children has been declining. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the percentage of low-income children younger than five who were underweight dropped from 8 percent in 1973 to under 5 percent in 2005. (In the same period, the OPR for children rose from 14.4 percent to 17.6 percent.)

Housing and Home Appliances. In 1970, about 14 percent of poverty-level households were officially deemed "overcrowded," with more people than rooms to live in. By 2001, just 6 percent of poor households were overcrowded--a proportion lower than for nonpoor households as recently as 1970. Moreover, between 1980 and 2001, heated floor space per person in the homes of the officially poor increased by 27 percent. And in 2001, just 2.5 percent of poverty-level households lacked plumbing facilities--a lower share than for nonpoor households in 1970.

Trends in furnishings and appurtenances tell the same story: poor households' possession of modern conveniences has been growing rapidly. For many of these items--telephones, television sets, central air conditioning, and microwave ovens--prevalence in poverty-level households in 2001 exceeded that of median-income households in 1980.

Personal Transportation. In 1973, almost three-fifths of the households in the lowest income quintile lacked a car. In 2003, by contrast, over three-fifths of poverty-level households owned one or more cars. In that same year, moreover, 14 percent of households below the poverty line owned two or more cars, and 7 percent had two or more trucks.

Health Care. Between 1970 and 2004, the infant mortality rate fell by a remarkable two-thirds. And it continued its almost uninterrupted decline after 1973, even as the OPR for children began to rise. The disconnect is particularly striking for white infants. Between 1974 and 2004, their mortality rate fell by three-fifths, from 14.8 deaths per thousand to 5.7 deaths per thousand. Yet the OPR for white children rose from 11.2 percent to 14.3 percent.


OPR, by the way, stands for "official poverty rate".

So you're saying that the poor are getting poorer. But somehow they've also gained access to more food, more cars, more household appliances, and larger homes. They're also less likely, rather than more likely, to die in infancy.

So how can you square these facts with your assertion that the poor are getting poorer?

John said...

Oops. Forgot the link. Here it is.

Geoffrey Kruse-Safford said...

Wow, John. I never never Never NEVER said national wealth was declining. Back when the housing bubble burst, a huge amount of fake money - in the form of electronic ones and zeroes in bank computers, rather than cold, hard cash - did evaporate pretty quickly.

What I said, which was nothing more than repeating something that is a neat little fun-fact, was that the share of the national wealth held by various socio-economic cohorts was changing rapidly, with potentially destabilizing effects.

That's what I said, what the chart said, what the link said, and so on.

John said...

Thanks for clarifying, Geoffrey. So you agree that the plight of the poor in America is, in fact, improving, rather than worsening?

Marshall Art said...

I'd think he'd have to considering Ron Sider's book, "Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger", offered by Dan two posts below. The preface of the book cites data confirming a shrinking amount of undernourished people in the world.

As to King, I think his strong suit was in civil rights for people of all races, religions and ethnic backgrounds. His opinions on the causes of poverty carries the same specious arguments of the average lefty, with the same lack of supporting evidence. That there may be in the world those who use their wealth for ill and/or accumulate it at the expense of others is hardly an argument for simple living.

If simple living means contentedness with what one has, I have no issue with the concept as I believe such is possible even whilst pursuing more. It seems a dichotomy, but it isn't.

But simple living as opposed to technological advancements, and the wealth creation that so often goes with it, does not improve lives for the most people. Is it your contention, Dan, that simple living would involve handing over ideas and inventions for the betterment of all while accepting no compensation? Are you suggesting that compensation must be limited to some arbitrary amount? Simple living would not allow you the home in which you live and the means to clean and cook and educate your kids as you now do. Someone stepped up and created and through that creating also created wealth and invested that wealth to mass produce for everyone's benefit and...it just goes on and on and the world is far better off despite our fallen natures.

There's no utopia on this world. None can be created because there aren't enough people who see things the same way, so disfunction will reign. Our current system is the best available and "simple living" as you've so far presented is worse than a pipe dream. It's unnatural and not better than what we have.

It is difficult to have ambition for worldly things and yet not be emotionally attached to that ambition, but it not impossible. I prefer more than I need (should I ever be so blessed to attain it) not to store up treasure as much as to prepare for the unexpected. THAT is stewardship of God's bounty. It is NOT a lack of faith in God's ability to provide what we need, because I don't think that "God will provide" means that we should sit on our asses by the campfire singing Kumbaya until He delivers.

Geoffrey Kruse-Safford said...

Marshall Art: "Our current system is the best available and "simple living" as you've so far presented is worse than a pipe dream. It's unnatural and not better than what we have."

Seriously? You believe this? As we survey the wreckage of our economy, our social fabric, our physical infrastructure, all you can say is, "Well, don't wish for anything better"?

I pity you, Marshall, not only for your lack of imagination, but specifically any moral imagination to consider the possibility that our world could be better than it is.

There is nothing more to say than that, really. Morally, socially, politically, imaginatively, you are already dead, wandering around haunting the rest of us who not only are alive, but wish to live more freely, more abundantly, more humanely and humanly.

Geoffrey Kruse-Safford said...

The prophet Jeremiah said, "Without a vision, the people perish." We as a people are dying because the blindness you personify is our currently reigning ethos. Don't try anything, don't do anything, do hope or believe or love anything, just trudge through the round of days, making do as best one can - this is all that so many such as yourself offer.

I cannot imagine something less in the Spirit of the God of Jesus Christ, who makes all things new and brings new life to dry old bones and out of the tombs of our insistence that we just continue with what you call "natural".

Marshall Art said...

My goodness, Geoffrey! Those are some powerful statements! You know what would make them better? If they had anything to do with what I had actually said. Where the hell did THIS come from:

"Well, don't wish for anything better"

I didn't even freakin' imply that! There's nothing in my comment that comes close to suggesting I feel that way. You should come by the house sometime. I've a pile of rocks that can teach you about understanding plain English.

What the hell is the problem with you lefties that causes you all to get the vapors and act so defensively when your ideas or positions are scrutinized? If nothing else, such will help YOU hone your arguments. But no. You'd rather castigate your opponents. You know, or at least should, that the Bible teaches us to have an answer for our faith. You just seem to have accusations.

I'll make it really easy for you, Geoffrey. Without any shadow of a doubt, I KNOW the world, and definitely our nation, can be a far better place than it has ever been on its best day anywhere in history since time began. Got that? Are you with me so far? What follows is the point that should have been easy for even you to see at a glance:

The system under which we now live is the best system available. None that has been tried has ever proven superior. Even as we survey the wreckage of our economy, our social fabric, our physical infrastructure, our system is the best mankind has yet to develop. The poor of third world countries would love to be the poor of our country. Our imperfect system has done more for more people than any other.

What's more, it is YOUR ilk that has more to do with the problems in this country than are those of the theological/political/philosophical leanings of people like myself. And I am more than capable of defending THAT sky-is-blue fact of life any day of the week.

More BS:

"Don't try anything, don't do anything, do hope or believe or love anything, just trudge through the round of days, making do as best one can - this is all that so many such as yourself offer."

No one's trudging on THIS side, Sally. The truth is that what YOU'D like to try is no more than avoiding what works for the effort involved to make it work. Your blatherings are mere assumptions of what you'd prefer my questioning of simple living means. As usual, you take the typical tack of blocking any light that shines upon your "ideas" that might expose flaws and pretend you're warding off true aggression. Or worse, you have no answers so you assume a posture of exasperation and condescension, as in "if you don't know, I'm certainly not going to waste time telling you". That's a good way to get everyone on board, Geoffie. Give 'em crap in response to questions and critiques. How pathetic!

Geoffrey Kruse-Safford said...

Marshall, I still pity you. You wrote quite clearly - and I've been reading since I was four so I have some experience with it - is that our current socio-economic system is the best we can do, so rather than change it to improve the lives of people, we should just let it be. You called it natural, as if it were digestion or the heart pumping blood through arteries.

It is nothing of the kind. Our system is the result of deliberate choices, made more or less by the people who already control vast amounts of wealth and power, to ensure they continue to do so. Meanwhile, in Africa, children are dying of easily curable diseases like childhood ameobic diarrhea and malaria, which Big Pharma refuses to research because, being a tropical disease, there just isn't any money in it.

If our current economic system is "natural" as you claim, any attempt to change it, to work for greater justice, for a society where the hungry are fed, and more important have a say in the way their lives unfold, rather than dictated by private bureaucracies that decide who is in and who is out, these are "unnatural" acts, and cannot succeed.

These are the implications of the words you wrote, Marshall. I didn't write them. Since you claim not to believe them, perhaps you should change your wording. I can only tell what you are thinking from the words on the screen.

As for me and my motives, if you spent two minutes reading my blog you might come away with a completely different set of impressions, if, of course, you were willing to take the time to understand what I was writing.

Geoffrey Kruse-Safford said...

Marshall: "As usual, you take the typical tack of blocking any light that shines upon your "ideas" that might expose flaws and pretend you're warding off true aggression. Or worse, you have no answers so you assume a posture of exasperation and condescension, as in "if you don't know, I'm certainly not going to waste time telling you"."

First, shine all the lights you want. I want a more progressive tax system, like we had for decades that provided the basis, if not for justice at least for greater fairness than our current system does. I want better and more regulation of the financial markets, the banking system, limits on who can invest and how (in a corporate sense), and what financial instruments are legitimate and what are out of bounds. Like we had for decades when the market, while minuscule compared to today, was at least stable. I want stronger and more robust unions and greater ease at organizing for workers. In short, I kind of want the world we used to have that had a diverse economy, where small towns had vibrant business districts before first malls then big box stores came and destroyed them. I want a world where small farmers can compete on the open market without having to band together in co-ops to create the kinds of economies of scale necessary to compete with huge factory farms.

I want a world where the poor aren't called lazy by folks like you, but viewed as human beings in need, not just of compassion but of real support and help. I want a world where immigrants are welcomed to this country, without having to fear rape by those who brought them across the border, then deportation back to their home country to face prison or worse.

Is that clear enough for you?

Geoffrey Kruse-Safford said...

Furthermore, you are quite correct. I will not do your homework for you. I have spent the better part of my adult life studying this stuff and really don't have the desire to teach anyone stuff that takes me roughly ten seconds to find out. Like with John, who didn't understand the difference between national wealth and GDP - I used Google and, WHAMO! there was the answer.

It is not I who is the lazy one here, Marshall. You don't understand how or why I am using a term, look it up. It's easy.

Marshall Art said...

"You wrote quite clearly - and I've been reading since I was four so I have some experience with it - is that our current socio-economic system is the best we can do, so rather than change it to improve the lives of people, we should just let it be. You called it natural, as if it were digestion or the heart pumping blood through arteries."

It ain't reading that's your problem, Geoffie. It's understanding what you read. You have an aversion to the point, whatever the point may be. You haven't done yourself any favors with the above quote because as it reads, only two things can explain how off base you are: you're an idiot or a liar. Considering you couldn't copy and paste any sentences of mine that match the above conclusion, the latter is more likely.

For example, I can't find anywhere where I've said our current system is "the best we can do". Those are YOUR words projected on my in order to demonize my position. I've only said that it's the best we've come up with so far, better than any alternative tried thus far. I believe my last comments before this drivel plainly stated that I believe we are indeed capable and doing better, that there are shortcomings and imperfections. As this cannot be denied, then to lie and say I said it's "the best we can do" is shameful and lacking in the grace Dan demands in these dialogues.

I also did not say that our current system is "natural". I said that simple living is "unnatural". If you wish to infer something from that, you might want to at least inquire as to whether or not your inference is accurate. To say the one is unnatural means that the other is natural is not the least bit logical in this context. Simple living is unnatural because it is counter to the natural inclinations of man to be comfortable and his desire for ease of living. The current system isn't "natural" but serves the natural instincts of man to achieve and acquire and make his life comfortable and secure. You might be able to sound out the words you read, but you have no ability to make sense of them.

So my words could not imply what you have pulled out of your nether regions. I'd say your bad attitude distorts what you read of those who are diametrically opposed to you goofy ideology.

More later.

Geoffrey Kruse-Safford said...

Marshall Art, late: "I also did not say that our current system is "natural". I said that simple living is "unnatural"."

Marshall Art, early: ""Our current system is the best available and "simple living" as you've so far presented is worse than a pipe dream. It's unnatural and not better than what we have."

Marshall, the implication of writing that simple, deliberate living as Dan is describing is "unnatural" is that our current system, which you quite clearly say is the best devised, is also natural, therefore not to be trifled with. Did I read in to your words meanings that aren't there? I'm not sure how else to read them. The opposite of "unnatural" is . . . "natural". The opposite of the unnatural living as Dan presents it is the system you laud as far better than any alternative, not only currently in operation, but also ever in the history of the world. Which is, by my own way of understanding opposites, antonyms, words that mean the opposite of one another - it is natural.

The implications of the gibberish you wrote is quite clear. It is, by and large gibberish, nonsense, self-contradictory, and nonsensical. This is just one example where it seems your own attempt at clarity clouded your own understanding of what it is wrote.

Dan is setting forth his own reasons for living a deliberate, simplified life. You come along, itching for an argument, and attempt to point out how he is not just wrong in some ideological fashion, but in some weird, ontological sense, saying his deliberate simplicity is "unnatural". I, on the other hand offer my own vision of a regulated market economy, in which there are gate-keepers that prevent too-powerful actors from threatening the entire system (like the too-big-to-fail banks a couple years ago). You offer . . . nothing other than what we currently have, which is run by the same people who brought us this mess.

Geoffrey Kruse-Safford said...

Marshall, furthermore, I applaud Dan's decisions, and his posts are making quite clear his reasons. His life choices are not and cannot be mine for any number of reasons, but I honor his, and see no reason why your reaction, to his life choices or my own, is so violent. There is no threat here, certainly, to you or your life choices, in two families who have chosen to live their lives substantively in different ways for good reasons, for Biblical reasons, for reasons of love, for reasons rooted in a basic distrust of human beings actually knowing what their best interest is and acting in that understanding. This is not an attack on anyone. It is a recognition of one's own limitations and faults - sin, to be blunt - and acting accordingly. How you could have an issue with that, claiming as you do to be Christian, is beyond me.

John said...

Geoffrey wrote:

Like with John, who didn't understand the difference between national wealth and GDP - I used Google and, WHAMO! there was the answer.

Thanks for educating me. Now do you agree that in America, the plight of the poor is improving, rather than worsening?

Geoffrey Kruse-Safford said...

No, John, the plight of the poor is not improving. Outside the statistics are those who no longer qualify for public assistance of any kind, those who spend their lives in peripatetic search for a place to lay their heads, to house their families, simply to escape the reality that, for America, they no longer exist.

We don't hear their stories because we no longer listen.

The increase in poverty, as well as the reality that the welfare reform and the stringent requirements for unemployment insurance (as well as its end), means precisely what I said it means - the poor are suffering and there are more of them.

John said...

Then how to you explain the statistics that I quoted above which show an improved quality of life?

Marshall Art said...

"Did I read in to your words meanings that aren't there? I'm not sure how else to read them. The opposite of "unnatural" is . . . "natural"."

Yes, Geoffrey, you did as always, miss the point and meaning of my words. But I see your problem (I don't mean the usual problem, but the problem specific to this point). You are equating "simple living" with the system under which we currently operate. More specifically, I was referring to "simple living" as a behavior and not as a system, which I allow can be such. And as a behavior it is unnatural except for those for whom the efforts required to live without modern conveniences are weirdly seen as more Godly. As a system under which Dan would encourage more people to adhere, it does not allow for the natural tendencies of most people to seek comfort and ease of living. Our current system does. It is based on those tendencies.

More to the point, it allows for most any variation of personal desire regarding how to live one's own life. Though some wish to acquire all the most expensive gadgets in order to live their lives to the fullest, it also allows for the Dans in the country to live their lives as well. I don't see how it works the other way around, and I don't see how it can possibly work to relieve poverty. Seems to me it would exacerbate the problem since there would be no wealth created by a world full of simple livers.

John said...

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