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re: Is it possible to keep a country if almost everything is subservient to the profit motive?
Posted on 5/1/26 at 7:16 am to weagle1999
Posted on 5/1/26 at 7:16 am to weagle1999
Americans’ lifestyles keep improving decade after decade. And the gap between American lifestyles and those of the rest of the industrialized world keeps growing. Yet there continues to grow a feeling that we are doing poorly.
What has actually happened is that Americans have chosen, of their own free will, to get and spend as much as they possibly can. They have traded their free time (mostly that of the mothers) for trinkets.
Half the people I know have an outdoor kitchen. Is this necessary? You can do cookouts the way they were done when I was a kid, by having a cheap grill and using your indoor kitchen. But nope, we have to have an elaborate outdoor kitchen with a television.
The size of a starter home is about 80% bigger than when I was a kid even though the size of the families is smaller. These are choices we are making that cause us to need two incomes and turn our lives into a rat race.
What has actually happened is that Americans have chosen, of their own free will, to get and spend as much as they possibly can. They have traded their free time (mostly that of the mothers) for trinkets.
Half the people I know have an outdoor kitchen. Is this necessary? You can do cookouts the way they were done when I was a kid, by having a cheap grill and using your indoor kitchen. But nope, we have to have an elaborate outdoor kitchen with a television.
The size of a starter home is about 80% bigger than when I was a kid even though the size of the families is smaller. These are choices we are making that cause us to need two incomes and turn our lives into a rat race.
This post was edited on 5/1/26 at 7:17 am
2
Posted on 5/1/26 at 7:18 am to weagle1999
quote:
I can’t help but think that many of the problems in the US that most of us want solved originated with someone wanting to make more money.
I can't help but think that the device you're communicating with only exists because someone wanted to make more money.
Posted on 5/1/26 at 7:39 am to nealnan8
quote:
The purest form of free market capitalism never included the idea of industries heavily influencing and controlling politicians and lawmakers to favor their own industries and businesses.
As included in the conceptual theoretical framework, yeah, but it still happened.
In fact, the American Revolution was as much a reaction to crony capitalism as it was to taxation. British mercantilism granted state-sanctioned monopolies to the companies that paid them off, like the British East India Company. That, as much as anything else, is what caused the Boston Tea Party.
Alexander Hamilton and his followers (called Hamiltonians) wanted a strong central government environment in which banks and manufacturers would partner with government.
Nobody here has heard of the Yazoo Land Scandal of 1790?
State government routinely issued land grants and exclusive charters to political allies.
Crony capitalism has always existed. Certainly it's always existed in this country. But it's always existed. It might have been the clergy that was the Ruling Class or the military or a monarchy, but deals have always been made in smoky back rooms while men twist their mustaches and laugh like Vincent Price. Always. Going back to Jesus' time. That's the whole reason He had such harsh words for the religious leaders and chased them out of the Temple. Government has always put their thumb on the scale for those who helped certain politicians.
It's always amazing to me that populism has convinced people that this is something new.
This post was edited on 5/1/26 at 7:40 am
Posted on 5/1/26 at 7:41 am to Penrod
quote:
Americans’ lifestyles keep improving decade after decade. And the gap between American lifestyles and those of the rest of the industrialized world keeps growing. Yet there continues to grow a feeling that we are doing poorly.
What has actually happened is that Americans have chosen, of their own free will, to get and spend as much as they possibly can. They have traded their free time (mostly that of the mothers) for trinkets.
Half the people I know have an outdoor kitchen. Is this necessary? You can do cookouts the way they were done when I was a kid, by having a cheap grill and using your indoor kitchen. But nope, we have to have an elaborate outdoor kitchen with a television.
The size of a starter home is about 80% bigger than when I was a kid even though the size of the families is smaller. These are choices we are making that cause us to need two incomes and turn our lives into a rat race.
No lies detected.
Posted on 5/1/26 at 7:43 am to wackatimesthree
quote:
Government has always put their thumb on the scale for those who helped certain politicians.
Which is just one of the many reasons we should have kept its power at the minimum level required for its legitimate functions. We're well past the tipping point now.
Posted on 5/1/26 at 7:45 am to Flats
quote:
Which is just one of the many reasons we should have kept its power at the minimum level required for its legitimate functions. We're well past the tipping point now.
Agreed.
The Hamiltonians won.
Posted on 5/1/26 at 7:53 am to weagle1999
quote:
I can’t help but think that many of the problems in the US that most of us want solved originated with someone wanting to make more money.
Go in to your boss’s office today and tell him or her you want a reduction in salary.
Posted on 5/1/26 at 8:04 am to weagle1999
quote:
I also think that many of us are fooling ourselves about what America is really about now. Our culture revolves around money and consumption foremost (I think).
It is true that we have become a post-duty society. Pretty much the entire Western world has.
People are largely not concerned with what their obligations might be to their community, their neighbor, their country, their church, etc.
People are only concerned with what they think they are entitled to. What they "have a right" to.
But this extends far beyond money and consumption. And it's a direct result IMO of abandoning traditional Judaeo Christian values.
Posted on 5/1/26 at 8:34 am to weagle1999
Greed is a sin, as it is a form of idolatry.
There’s nothing wrong with making profit, but doing so immorally is problematic, and a nation that does not honor Jesus Christ as Lord cannot expect His blessing.
There’s nothing wrong with making profit, but doing so immorally is problematic, and a nation that does not honor Jesus Christ as Lord cannot expect His blessing.
Posted on 5/1/26 at 8:51 am to weagle1999
quote:
wanting to make more money.
Illegals, foreign owned businesses, welfare, take your pick.
Democrats did not open the border for illegals and create welfare in order to make money. They wanted votes to stay in power.
Posted on 5/1/26 at 8:55 am to weagle1999
The biggest issue we face is low moral whores that infest Congress. The problem is you aren’t able to vote them out. If you removed all foreign money, limited campaign money and threw extremely tight punitive rules on any lobbying you could fix it. It would help if our elections were secure and trustworthy.
Frankly there isn’t a way out of our current situation
Frankly there isn’t a way out of our current situation
Posted on 5/1/26 at 8:58 am to weagle1999
2 things have contributed the most:
1. The ubiquity of television and all the advertisements post ww2;
2. The policy decision to make consumption (and value consumption over production) the driver of the economy.
The second has arguably worked for the nation as a whole but it has left a lot of people behind.
1. The ubiquity of television and all the advertisements post ww2;
2. The policy decision to make consumption (and value consumption over production) the driver of the economy.
The second has arguably worked for the nation as a whole but it has left a lot of people behind.
Posted on 5/1/26 at 8:59 am to weagle1999
People offering goods and services is a healthy economy when it's honest. Ours is not. We don't really produce the products we use and we sneer and undervalue service in favor of speculation... which makes people who produce nothing wealthy. Because we produce nothing and much of our wealth is generated from speculation and politics, it's not surprising that debt has become the foundation of the American economy and that creates a completely unreal sense of what wealth is. The result is a creep toward poverty and a shrinking but far wealthier elite. The strain on the middle will eventually break it and then there will be a collapse. Debt is the only thing holding it up and debt isn't healthy. That our culture has become one big "get yours while you can" mentality only amplifies this problem.
Posted on 5/1/26 at 9:22 am to The_Duke
quote:
While capitalism may be the strongest economic system we currently have, one of its inherent drawbacks is that it relies on perpetual growth.
That's not completely true. Usury however, does require perpetual growth, and that's what we currently have in the form of the global investment market. It isn't capitalism in the sense of free-will exchange of goods and services.
Usury on such a scale requires socialism where ownership of the means of production is distributed among shareholders (proletariat) who in-turn require a return on their investments.
People who don't invest are useful idiots for "voting" and keeping anyone with visions of grandeur in line for the "greater good".
Whether it's bankers, barons, or government...they all suck.
Posted on 5/1/26 at 9:24 am to AUCom96
quote:
People offering goods and services is a healthy economy when it's honest. Ours is not. We don't really produce the products we use and we sneer and undervalue service in favor of speculation... which makes people who produce nothing wealthy. Because we produce nothing and much of our wealth is generated from speculation and politics, it's not surprising that debt has become the foundation of the American economy and that creates a completely unreal sense of what wealth is. The result is a creep toward poverty and a shrinking but far wealthier elite. The strain on the middle will eventually break it and then there will be a collapse. Debt is the only thing holding it up and debt isn't healthy. That our culture has become one big "get yours while you can" mentality only amplifies this problem.
Truth
Posted on 5/1/26 at 9:29 am to Sofaking2
quote:
But that’s demonized. Look at socialism being responsible from the death of tens of millions in the 20th century and we have idiots still romanticizing it.
Because people of low IQ and lack of incentive are jealous.
Posted on 5/1/26 at 9:34 am to Penrod
quote:
Americans’ lifestyles keep improving decade after decade. And the gap between American lifestyles and those of the rest of the industrialized world keeps growing. Yet there continues to grow a feeling that we are doing poorly.
What has actually happened is that Americans have chosen, of their own free will, to get and spend as much as they possibly can. They have traded their free time (mostly that of the mothers) for trinkets.
Half the people I know have an outdoor kitchen. Is this necessary? You can do cookouts the way they were done when I was a kid, by having a cheap grill and using your indoor kitchen. But nope, we have to have an elaborate outdoor kitchen with a television.
The size of a starter home is about 80% bigger than when I was a kid even though the size of the families is smaller. These are choices we are making that cause us to need two incomes and turn our lives into a rat race.
Oh, and it's all fueled by debt.
Posted on 5/1/26 at 11:02 am to Jimmy Russel
quote:
Oh, and it's all fueled by debt.
I wouldn’t go that far, but surely debt is part of it. In either event, the complaints are about life being too expensive, not about national debt.
Posted on 5/1/26 at 11:17 am to nealnan8
quote:
The purest form of free market capitalism never included the idea of industries heavily influencing and controlling politicians and lawmakers to favor their own industries and businesses. True free market capitalism has not existed for close to 100 years.
Fair point
Posted on 5/1/26 at 11:22 am to weagle1999
I didn't even know I had an alter.
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