From: Suresh Naidu (snaidu@cantor.math.uwaterloo.ca)
Date: Thu Nov 07 1996 - 10:56:19 MST
Suresh Naidu
occaisonal student
math 1a, computer science
Ask not what your brand name can do for you,
but what you can do for your brand name.
On Thu, 7 Nov 1996, David Musick wrote:
> Suresh Naidu said, "The government was as short sighted as can be, as usual.
> But the businesses are still the ones who dumped the waste."
>
> I would correct this statement, to make it more accurate. It was *PEOPLE in
> the businesses* who dumped the waste. There were certain, specific
> individuals who dumped that waste, and the fact that they were business owners
> has as much relevance as their skin or eye color to the fact that they were so
> unethical that they would do such a horrible thing. These polluters are
> highly unethical people who HAPPEN to be business owners as well. Being
> business owners didn't *cause* them to be evil polluters. Capitalism doesn't
> CAUSE people to be unethical. Yes, there are unethical people who trade in
> the capitalist system who ALSO do very bad things, but to decry all of
> capitalism and business because of the acts of a few assholes who fuck people
> over is as stupid and irrational as being racist because one black guy attacks
> you and steals your clothes.
Capitalism encourages people to be unethical. The most unethical can be
the most profitable, althought this is not always the case, it happens
way too frequently. The amount of environmental damage one person
can do when he doesn't have total control over a large organization is far less.
On his own he could pollute a small piece of land, as the
businessman he can destroy an entire ecosystem. Capitalism gives power to
the unethical so they can do more damage.
>
> Suresh, you're over-generalizing, BIG-TIME! You're standing in the middle of
> a battlefield, blowing away friend and enemy alike. "The enemies are humans;
> shoot the enemies. All humans are enemies; shoot all humans" is the same as
> "The bad people who pollute and fuck people over are business people; stop
> them from committing their evil acts. All business people are evil; stop all
> businesses." Both are examples of very bad logic. Yet this is exactly the
> logic you are using.
>
The bad people who pollute and fuck over people are the ones with the
most power in capitalism. That's a method of getting rich, forfeiting
ethics in favour of profits. Thus, the ones who get power are the
unethical ones. You may call it pragmatic, but I call it nasty. This is
the logic I'm following: Profits can be earned by the nastiest methods
possible, thus the unethical ones in society will accumulate the most
money, and thus power.
While I acknowledge that not all business people are evil, some are
ignorant of the effects their number crunching has on other people, and
some are trying to help, but don't know how to do it and remain
competitive. It's very hard to be nice and
> Check your thinking; you've got a bad meme in there somewhere, trying to take
> over your mind.
>
> Find out what the REAL enemy is. It's not business. It's not even
> government. There's something much deeper. And until you understand the real
> sources of the world's problems, all your grand plans for society will be
> misguided and ineffective.
>
Okay, can you tell me??? If I find it I'll let you know. I really wish
there was some cabal of people (y'know, like the Roscrucians, Freemasons,
Illuminati, Communists, Capitalists, Muppets, Extropians) making
the world bad, then at least you could direct efforts to topple it.
But I guess the fault lies with
ourselves, and all the failings currently being human entails. This isn't
something you can fight without indoctorination or massive dosages of
Prozac(Television?).
The
reason I advocate anarchy is because I hope it will
encourage the same principles of mutual aid that have helped us evolve to
this point, so we can develop into a species that will take itself to the
stars. <ahhh, starry dreamy eyes>
(I hate vi)
I know the real enemy is not big business. But they are a sore point in
society. The real enemy is .... RICHARD SIMMONDS(sorry...I'll take my
methadone). It sucks that people are sometimes rapacious, brutal and
savage,but
that's why we need to keep power imbalances from happening, so that
nobody, regardless of how "benevolent", can dictate terms to anyone else.
The last thing anybody wants is to have brutal people have power over you,
so the only way to prevent this from happening is to minimize the absolute
power anyone has over anybody else.
Let's face it, any system would work if people were a bit "nicer".
> - David Musick
>
> - question tradition -
>
>
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