Do Natural Rights Exist Without Government ?

[NYcarbineer]

Establishing What the Inalienable Rights of Man Are

G.T. et. al., the immediate origin of natural rights is, uh, you know, nature, and the God of nature is the ultimate origin.

While one need not appeal to God to demonstrate their actuality and inviolability, as I have already shown, Quantum, one must never forget the fact of their ultimate origin. One does not prove what innate rights are with syllogisms predicated on ability or free will. Natural rights are not synonymous to ability and they are not predicated on ability. The matter is not abstract in the sense that the know-nothings would have it, but it's not that simple either. The origin and the essence of the natural rights of man have been established for centuries. The concrete concerns on which they are immediately predicated and their identity have been established for centuries.

Disregard the implications regarding the ultimate origin of natural rights, you will end up making indefensible arguments regarding their nature and identity.

Please, stop trying to reinvent the wheel. It only confuses matters.

Natural rights are immediately predicated on the same real-world, dichotomic dynamics that divulge their exact identity: light and transient transgressions-prolonged and existential transgressions and its correlate initial force-defensive force.

Period. End of discussion. They are real-world concerns. They are natural. They are concrete. They are material. They are absolute. Hence, they are identified and demonstrated accordingly. They are not identified and demonstrated with syllogisms predicated on secondary concerns.

I have the ability to wiggle my toes. So what?

I could lose that ability should some paralysis strike me. The point here is that when one argues natural rights on the basis of innate abilities, one fallaciously implies that they are subject to negation by the whims of other agents. They are not inalienable in the sense that they cannot (ability) be suppressed or violated; they are inalienable in the sense that they may not (consent) be suppressed or violated without dire consequences, which may include the use deadly force.

In the absence of violation, we have peace; in the presence of violation, war.

In other words, they are identified and demonstrated on the basis of the material impact that human actions have on the material concerns of human life, liberty and property. Period.

So much for the silly red herrings of (1) the abstractions of social constructs and (2) the notion that natural rights are not inalienable because they can be suppressed or violated on the fallacious basis of ability.

RABBI, G.T. ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION?

DO YOU GET THE POINT OF THE FOLLOWING NOW?

Your claim that the mutual obligations of morality are not pertinent to understanding the essence of natural rights, particularly as they are carried over from the state of nature and expressed in the state of civil government, is false and irrational. Obviously, the understanding of this goes to their parameters, RABBI, one of the several things that accordingly you supposedly cannot be determined by sentient beings--for crying out loud! And that is self-evident too, given the necessities of the government's regulatory and judicial authority regarding the legitimate extent of civil liberties in the face of conflicting interests.

How about you stop wasting our time with your obviously ill-considered and fallacious claims as you think to preemptively negate the manifestly essential premises of natural law.

Your ignorance and closed-minded, intellectual bigotry are not the stuff of real arguments.

___________________________________________

Edit: So much for the silly red herrings of (1) the abstractions of social constructs and (2) the notion that natural rights are not inalienable because they can be suppressed or violated on the fallacious basis of ability.

Nothing you said refutes the point that natural rights only exist as ideas. They do not exist as facts.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

dblack, glad it tickled you. It tickled me hehe

Fox, I like your efforts but again I'm going to have to call you out. So free markets don't enable humans to garner wealth? Strange. Pretty sure you're not living in the same world I am.

Of course free markets enable humans to garner wealth. That is the purpose of those who engage in commercial enterprise. And the vast majority of them are doing it for purely selfish motives. And in so doing they serve the rest of us quite well.

Again, what planet are you talking about? You and dblack are just saying things that sound pleasant to you because you believe them. But in order for beliefs to be rational they must be defensible. Neither of you are participating in defensible argument. Let me explain why because you have no clue what I'm talking about, because neither of you have ever cared to investigate what the rules of logic are and what constitutes a cogent proposition--one that is supported by evidence.

How, exactly, can rich people secure access to their money in a completely free market? Are they somehow apply to rig a market that has no strings in such a way that only they can get rich, or do they need to create a way to rig the market by taking away the ability of other people to compete?

In other words, they need something external to the market to control it, that something is called government. In other words, the very thing Marx, and all the idiots who are blinded by ideology, think will fix the problem is actually creating the problem.

Fox, if you admit human beings garner wealth in free markets, then you must also recognize the fact that humans also will use their wealth for leverage into gaining access to more wealth. It is as human as masturbaiton for a person who finds himself with more than others to use that accumulation to generate even greater accumulation.

Some will, but the vast majority won't. That is because, unlike Marx, we now have mathematical proof that cooperation produces better results than trying to come out the winner. In other wrods, you can actually get richer by helping people than trying to corner the market.

Funny thing, if you bother to look at history you will see that every time someone tried to corner the market they ended up losing. In other words, the math won out even before we knew about the math.

Now please consider the real world (which you clearly don't do often in debate). What do persons who have a lot of money do? They use whatever means within law (and outside of technical legality) to gain ever greater sums. How do they do this? Please look at reality! They took Federal Election Commission to the Supreme Court to expand political donations per election cycle!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is exactly what I'm talking about !!!!!!!!! A wrench has been thrown into free markets by virtue of wealthy persons (i.e. corporations) have 100% say in politics and the people have none.

Explain the Kochs. They actually spend a great deal of their money striving to make it harder for them to hog the wealth, and get demonized by the Democrats for their tactics.

Wait, that wasn't the real world you meant, was it?

That is some kind of upside "liberty" that your espousing, which inevitably leads to this scenario. Defining liberty as natural rights not being infringed upon precisely undermines your whole argument because free markets always end up with the markets favoring the winners who naturally exploit losers in order to make even greater sums. Thus the losers are further cast into loser-hood. Sounds like a great reality to live in, which we do!

Let me get this straight, the real world fact that we don't have a free market, and that government regulations and control of the market makes people less free, is somehow proof that free markets are bad.

Where have I heard that argument before? That's right, I hear it every time some guy that thinks Marx is a genius pops into a discussion about economics.

So you may start with a free market but you end up with people using their leverages to influence law so that they are increasingly favored, drowning out all other voices. I thought freedom was where people had a say in their own lives. We currently don't. Tell me how you vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs?

We have never started with a free market, if we had we wouldn't have ended up with the problem you insist we have because we have free markets.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

in my view, the great conceit of the socialist mindset is that claim that 'winners' imply 'losers'. My neighbor becoming fantastically wealthy simply doesn't make me any poorer. It can only be viewed that way relatively, in which case one must ask how my would situation change if my wealthy neighbor were simply 'disappeared'?

You are accusing socialists of excessive pride in claiming some people are rich and others are not?

What's more is you claim that ownership does not imply reduced availability. So if Monsanto owns 10% of the world, does that mean there is still 100% available? No. It means the rest of the inhabitant must do with 90%. What if 1% of the world owns 40% of its wealth? What does that leave for 99% of people? You're right, 60%. And believe it or not, 40% of the world really is owned by 1%. World's richest 1% own 40% of all wealth, UN report discovers | Money | The Guardian

I know you don't take reality serious but this planet is finite. Corporations can only claim a finite amount. So if corporations own half the world, they are winners. We both agree. Does that mean they are benefiting the rest? Not necessarily. People do not always act in the interests of other people. And indeed those in power often act in their own interests to the dismay of other groups. Right? How do you think this dynamic of 1% owning 40% influences the rest of the inhabitants? Take a look around, figuratively. There is abjection among the world's poor. Why is that? That is precisely because corporations have claimed ownership of lands and drove subsistence farmers off in order to make cash crops. How does this benefit people who were living on the land and now are forced into cities or hillsides?

Did those drive from their land in Haiti or Cuba or Malaysia (I could go on and on) people loose? Now they are tied into depending on markets whereas they once were completely free human beings without any needs of the global market.

Winners on a finite world implies losers. Just like if there are 100 jelly beans and I take 90, does that leave you with 100 also?

On "planet-dblack" the world is infinite and infinite growth is possible. Thus we can have winners without losers. And in your narrow and obviously false premise, you know that our planet is finite. But you refuse to admit that if you take away from the totality, you no longer have access to the totality. The totality has shrunk. Shrinking is not different from loosing. The more elites have, the less that can be distributed among people. I'm not saying corporations and the rich don't give back or distribute, but the only way profit exists is they keep more than they distribute. Thus, the people loose.

On question, what makes you think wealth is finite?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Your replies consist of "poop" "dumb" excessive stupidity" "irrelevant" all the while offering no defense of your negations or propositions. It's fresh to hear you consider yourself delusional because on the majority of my sincere attempts to dialogue have been met with quite frankly delusional replies. Your realm of understanding does not consist of a well rounded outlook of reality, but of an objectified or personified understanding through the various authors and lecturers you've given attention (and clearly shut others out).

Perhaps I'm wrong, but I gather your experience does not seem diverse. A diversity of experience opens one up to strange ideas, really I'm just saying you appear less "open to experience" based on the model: Openness to experience - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. I'm sorry you do not seem interested in participating in rational dialogue and my repeated failed attempts arise from the woeful desire and of hope something has to click with you and cause you to confront what I'm saying within defensible reasoning or concrete evidence. Instead, it never does and your replies offer is a game to name the opposition without proffering substance or evidence.

Either reply to the finite argument above or it seems you refuse to confront the arguments on a rational level yet you still claim to be rational, I presume.

And I don't take your question as serious about the rules of thought. If you really want to know I will walk you though them, exercise for us both.

That was funny.

Tell me something how does the fact that you were spoon fed an ideology lead to diversity of experience?

 

[NYcarbineer]

Right. Try to refute my posts in the above.

Or more to the point, deal with this everyday reality, the one I will share with Sallow again momentarily. . . .

Tell that to the man with the business end of loaded gun pointed at your head should you be caught with your hand in the cookie jar, and see how far your talk about his right to stop you is not real prior to the abstractions of social constructs.

Bang, bang.

actions are real---rights are invented

I'll try again. This whole thread is just stupid equivocation. Civil rights, those freedoms protected by government, are indeed "invented", in the sense that they are designated by the state. But the inalienable freedoms, those we are empowered to exercise as an innate property of volition and consciousness, exist whether they are protected or not. It's just a matter of how you're defining "rights".

Ugh. What are you trying to say?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Well, not to quibble, but some people getting 'more wealthy' does make others 'less wealthy' relatively. I'm just saying that being 'less wealthy' than someone else is not the same thing as being 'poorer' than you'd have been otherwise, which is how the socialists usually want to frame it.

But 'relatively', or more precisely 'comparatively', is not really a factor. America's poor are very rich indeed when compared to most of the world's poor. And wealth distribution is a problem only when that wealth is finite.

The only issue is whether the system/government/culture does not interfere in any way with each person having the unalienable right to try to achieve his/her full potential.

Bill Gates was in the right place in the right time and possessed the right instincts to achieve a level of wealth that most of us can only imagine. But his wealth took nothing away from anybody else and in fact his success has provided millions of good paying jobs and business opportunities for others. It did not prevent Steve Jobs from also becoming fantastically wealthy, nor can it be argued that Jobs did not also benefit from Gates' success and vice versa. And certainly neither of them cost me a dime or prevented me from achieving my own level of success that, though significantly less than theirs, was almost certainly enhanced because of the industries and opportunities that have spun off from Microsoft and Apple.

It is a near certainty that neither Gates or Jobs knows that AlbqOwl exists and neither has given me a single thought. But because they had the right and ability to achieve amazing success, they nevertheless played a part in my own in ways that almost certainly never occurred to either of them.

They took nothing away from anybody, but rather created industries that have in one way or another enriched us all.

That is how a free market works. And how recognition of and security of unalienable (natural) rights creates much more successful societies overall than any other system.

Uhmmm.... Gates was given a monopoly of the PC market by IBM for IBM PCs to convince govco to not break IBM up like they had just broken up ma bell (IBM had 95% of the computing market at the time). Gates then leveraged that monopoly to force the IBM PC manufacturers to include the cost of a windows license with every PC whether their customers wanted windows or not. This monopoly of the operating system market for IBM PC compatibles went on for many years and Microsoft was never punished for it, effectively killing all the for fee OS competitors at the time (even IBM's OS/2) and making Microsoft the dominant player in OSes for decades to come.

Gates was also allowed to use their OS monopoly derived money to buy up all of the word processing, presentation, spreadsheet competition... and bundle it all together thus creating the monopoly on the most commonly used types of office applications as well.

So, no that's not how a free market works.

Funny, I know plenty of people that bought PCs without paying for Windows.

By the way, IBM never had 90% of the market. Also, they licensed MS-DOS from Jobs, not the other way around. Jobs kept the rights and sold it to other companies at the same time. The reason it took so much of the market was it was built to run on Intel chips.

 

[dblack]

actions are real---rights are invented

I'll try again. This whole thread is just stupid equivocation. Civil rights, those freedoms protected by government, are indeed "invented", in the sense that they are designated by the state. But the inalienable freedoms, those we are empowered to exercise as an innate property of volition and consciousness, exist whether they are protected or not. It's just a matter of how you're defining "rights".

Ugh. What are you trying to say?

Nuthin. n/m

 

[RKMBrown]

But 'relatively', or more precisely 'comparatively', is not really a factor. America's poor are very rich indeed when compared to most of the world's poor. And wealth distribution is a problem only when that wealth is finite.

The only issue is whether the system/government/culture does not interfere in any way with each person having the unalienable right to try to achieve his/her full potential.

Bill Gates was in the right place in the right time and possessed the right instincts to achieve a level of wealth that most of us can only imagine. But his wealth took nothing away from anybody else and in fact his success has provided millions of good paying jobs and business opportunities for others. It did not prevent Steve Jobs from also becoming fantastically wealthy, nor can it be argued that Jobs did not also benefit from Gates' success and vice versa. And certainly neither of them cost me a dime or prevented me from achieving my own level of success that, though significantly less than theirs, was almost certainly enhanced because of the industries and opportunities that have spun off from Microsoft and Apple.

It is a near certainty that neither Gates or Jobs knows that AlbqOwl exists and neither has given me a single thought. But because they had the right and ability to achieve amazing success, they nevertheless played a part in my own in ways that almost certainly never occurred to either of them.

They took nothing away from anybody, but rather created industries that have in one way or another enriched us all.

That is how a free market works. And how recognition of and security of unalienable (natural) rights creates much more successful societies overall than any other system.

Uhmmm.... Gates was given a monopoly of the PC market by IBM for IBM PCs to convince govco to not break IBM up like they had just broken up ma bell (IBM had 95% of the computing market at the time). Gates then leveraged that monopoly to force the IBM PC manufacturers to include the cost of a windows license with every PC whether their customers wanted windows or not. This monopoly of the operating system market for IBM PC compatibles went on for many years and Microsoft was never punished for it, effectively killing all the for fee OS competitors at the time (even IBM's OS/2) and making Microsoft the dominant player in OSes for decades to come.

Gates was also allowed to use their OS monopoly derived money to buy up all of the word processing, presentation, spreadsheet competition... and bundle it all together thus creating the monopoly on the most commonly used types of office applications as well.

So, no that's not how a free market works.

Funny, I know plenty of people that bought PCs without paying for Windows.

By the way, IBM never had 90% of the market. Also, they licensed MS-DOS from Jobs, not the other way around. Jobs kept the rights and sold it to other companies at the same time. The reason it took so much of the market was it was built to run on Intel chips.

Ok, maybe it was 81% not 90%.

You off your meds today? Jobs worked for Apple not Microsoft.

IBM paid for MS-DOS, IBM did all the testing, IBM re-wrote it for Billy. Anyways I'm not talking about MS-DOS, nimrod. I'm talking about Windows, duh.

Here's a rough primer on the issue.
Bundling of Microsoft Windows - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[dcraelin]

You don't think they could be 'instituted among men' by other means? Or would you simply call any such means a form of 'government'? In any case, I think you're simply noticing the difference between freedoms that are protected and those that aren't.
I keep coming back to this, but it seems most of the argument here is just semantics. One side is defining rights as freedoms protected by government, and then (reasonably) insisting that rights don't exist without some agency protecting them. But that simply ignores the other point of view, that freedoms can, and do, exists even if they aren't nominally protected.
All of this comes down to the motivation for this debate, namely an argument over the primacy of government. Both sides cling to 'rights' as their goal. But they're failing to recognize that they're not talking about the same thing. Freedom can exist without government. It can even be protected with alternate means. You don't necessarily need a coercive state government. Whether such freedom is called 'rights' or not is mere semantics.

I guess Im saying any means is a form of government, unless I suppose a man lives completely alone and isolated from others. The argument IS largely semantics, as Edie Brickell, said in a song, Philosophy is a walk on the slippery rocks.
I dont think a "freedom" is worth much if it cant be used. There is perhaps a common group of ideas that most men hold, Murder is wrong etc. that are common in the laws of all societies.

Have you ever noticed how little government has to do with our general, day-to-day freedom? Let me ask you this - what keeps you from beating your next door neighbor senseless and stealing his stuff? Is it your fear of government, or something else?

It is a general sense of decency I guess, as I spoke about above.....but government does enforce this.

I don't pretend to know what Carlin believed, I just can see that his actions and his words lead to a different conclusion.
By the way, it always amuses me when I meet a person that thinks quoting other people is actually debating. Debating is defending a position through argument, not quoting. If you read back through the thread you will see that, with one notable exception, you are the only person that thinks quoting other people is debating. Come back when you have enough confidence in your beliefs to actually defend them yourself.

Jefferson said it more eloquently than I ever could. Carlin came right to the point, rights are an idea. I wouldnt have said CUTE idea....perhaps noble idea....but ideas differ among different people.....and are only instituted among men by government.

Governments are ideas, does that make them not real?

They are ideas made into reality.

 

[beagle9]

dblack, glad it tickled you. It tickled me hehe

Fox, I like your efforts but again I'm going to have to call you out. So free markets don't enable humans to garner wealth? Strange. Pretty sure you're not living in the same world I am.

Of course free markets enable humans to garner wealth. That is the purpose of those who engage in commercial enterprise. And the vast majority of them are doing it for purely selfish motives. And in so doing they serve the rest of us quite well.

Under liberty--i.e. a society in which natural rights are recognized and not infringed--the free market is the finest system for commerce that humankind ever devised because it works without conscious effort or management of any kind. Those who are inclined to do so are free to go into business. Those who are not cut out for management or ill suited to operate businesses are free to work for wages. And we all are free to buy what we want from whomever is willing to sell it to us. And the only restrictions are those that the society chooses for themselves for whatever they agree on as the common good.

The U.S. Constitution was designed to allow that kind of liberty--not rights dictated to the people by some monarch or pope or other totalitarian government, but rather the people dictating to the government what powers it will have, such powers to include securing the rights of the people. And then the people would be alone to govern themselves and exercise their natural rights however they choose to do so.

This is where it gets dicey, and it has gotten dicey over the years.

I guess it all depends on who you ask or who it is that was found on the recieving end of certain things that were considered rights by others, but were then later found to be self made "rules" in which were created in a bubble instead.

Now I believe in natural born rights that human beings possess upon being born or before birth as a living and growing life within the womb in which has a right to therefore live, and the mother should protect this right always, and not instead abuse it. I believe in rules that govern and protect the rights of those who gather together for good, and therefore they would all unite and agree upon these things in which are self evident by the known effects of these things in knowledge of, and in view of once they are applied before all to see, and as well of course to give witness too. It is to be written down in record there of, and it is therefore a guideline in which serves later to make up a nation that all should prosper from and within. It should foster the means to live free within such a nation, and it should also foster happiness and liberty within such a nation.

It is that these things should bring forth great results because they are good, and not because they are bad. Now a society turning bad will confuse these things, because it is their intent to confuse for selfish purposes, and that is because they are bad when assuming this role within society.

The devil himself is the author of confusion, and it is that man should beware of this fact always.

 

[gnarlylove]

On question, what makes you think wealth is finite?

What is wealth?

Wealth is surplus value.

How is surplus value created?

Not from thin air but from productive labor.

Productive labor has a finite system with which to work (earth).

Therefore, surplus value is finite or real wealth is finite.

If you think wealth is printed money and credit, try eating printed money or your credit card when there's no planet on which to do productive labor. You'll find that money has no value. No body denies this, our currency is known as fiat--without basis.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Uhmmm.... Gates was given a monopoly of the PC market by IBM for IBM PCs to convince govco to not break IBM up like they had just broken up ma bell (IBM had 95% of the computing market at the time). Gates then leveraged that monopoly to force the IBM PC manufacturers to include the cost of a windows license with every PC whether their customers wanted windows or not. This monopoly of the operating system market for IBM PC compatibles went on for many years and Microsoft was never punished for it, effectively killing all the for fee OS competitors at the time (even IBM's OS/2) and making Microsoft the dominant player in OSes for decades to come.

Gates was also allowed to use their OS monopoly derived money to buy up all of the word processing, presentation, spreadsheet competition... and bundle it all together thus creating the monopoly on the most commonly used types of office applications as well.

So, no that's not how a free market works.

Funny, I know plenty of people that bought PCs without paying for Windows.

By the way, IBM never had 90% of the market. Also, they licensed MS-DOS from Jobs, not the other way around. Jobs kept the rights and sold it to other companies at the same time. The reason it took so much of the market was it was built to run on Intel chips.

Ok, maybe it was 81% not 90%.

You off your meds today? Jobs worked for Apple not Microsoft.

IBM paid for MS-DOS, IBM did all the testing, IBM re-wrote it for Billy. Anyways I'm not talking about MS-DOS, nimrod. I'm talking about Windows, duh.

Here's a rough primer on the issue.
Bundling of Microsoft Windows - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Funny how IBM didn't build Windows either, but don't let facts destroy your narrative.

PC clones had a fairly large percentage of the market at one time, but IBM never even got up to 50%.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

I guess Im saying any means is a form of government, unless I suppose a man lives completely alone and isolated from others. The argument IS largely semantics, as Edie Brickell, said in a song, Philosophy is a walk on the slippery rocks.
I dont think a "freedom" is worth much if it cant be used. There is perhaps a common group of ideas that most men hold, Murder is wrong etc. that are common in the laws of all societies.

Have you ever noticed how little government has to do with our general, day-to-day freedom? Let me ask you this - what keeps you from beating your next door neighbor senseless and stealing his stuff? Is it your fear of government, or something else?

It is a general sense of decency I guess, as I spoke about above.....but government does enforce this.

Jefferson said it more eloquently than I ever could. Carlin came right to the point, rights are an idea. I wouldnt have said CUTE idea....perhaps noble idea....but ideas differ among different people.....and are only instituted among men by government.

Governments are ideas, does that make them not real?

They are ideas made into reality.

Ideas made into reality. Funny, that sounds like a description of airplanes.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

On question, what makes you think wealth is finite?

What is wealth?

Wealth is surplus value.

How is surplus value created?

Not from thin air but from productive labor.

Productive labor has a finite system with which to work (earth).

Therefore, surplus value is finite or real wealth is finite.

If you think wealth is printed money and credit, try eating printed money or your credit card when there's no planet on which to do productive labor. You'll find that money has no value. No body denies this, our currency is known as fiat--without basis.

Which explains why GDP goes up faster than productivity.

Wait, it doesn't.

 

[gnarlylove]

That's not even a reply. GDP does not exist without production. We cannot produce an infinite amount of stuff. Take the 6th grade math question on your homework: the earth has the materials to make 600,000 tons of concrete. If we assemble those materials and pave a road using 600,000 tons worth of concrete, does the Earth gain 600,000 tons or does it stay the same? The correct answer is the earth remains the same weight.

It is the same. You cannot create useful value or products without production. Production can only operate within our planet. Are you proposing wealth exists outside our finite planet? Maybe you think the earth is flat and extends infinitely. News flash: it's a finite planet and under no condition can infinite wealth be generated from a finite system. Do you really think you can count to infinity starting with finite numbers?

 

[dilloduck]

That's not even a reply. GDP does not exist without production. We cannot produce an infinite amount of stuff. Take the 6th grade math question on your homework: the earth has the materials to make 600,000 tons of concrete. If we assemble those materials and pave a road using 600,000 tons worth of concrete, does the Earth gain 600,000 tons or does it stay the same? The correct answer is the earth remains the same weight.

It is the same. You cannot create useful value or products without production. Production can only operate within our planet. Are you proposing wealth exists outside our finite planet? Maybe you think the earth is flat and extends infinitely. News flash: it's a finite planet and under no condition can infinite wealth be generated from a finite system. Do you really think you can count to infinity starting with finite numbers?

Hold everything...we're going to mine the riches of the moon and bring them back here-----to infinity and beyond !

 

[gnarlylove]

That's not even a reply. GDP does not exist without production. We cannot produce an infinite amount of stuff. Take the 6th grade math question on your homework: the earth has the materials to make 600,000 tons of concrete. If we assemble those materials and pave a road using 600,000 tons worth of concrete, does the Earth gain 600,000 tons or does it stay the same? The correct answer is the earth remains the same weight.

It is the same. You cannot create useful value or products without production. Production can only operate within our planet. Are you proposing wealth exists outside our finite planet? Maybe you think the earth is flat and extends infinitely. News flash: it's a finite planet and under no condition can infinite wealth be generated from a finite system. Do you really think you can count to infinity starting with finite numbers?

Hold everything...we're going to mine the riches of the moon and bring them back here-----to infinity and beyond !

You read my mind! Good olde Newt Gingrich has solved this problem and we're on board--to the moon! To Andromeda Galaxy and beyond!

 

[dilloduck]

That's not even a reply. GDP does not exist without production. We cannot produce an infinite amount of stuff. Take the 6th grade math question on your homework: the earth has the materials to make 600,000 tons of concrete. If we assemble those materials and pave a road using 600,000 tons worth of concrete, does the Earth gain 600,000 tons or does it stay the same? The correct answer is the earth remains the same weight.

It is the same. You cannot create useful value or products without production. Production can only operate within our planet. Are you proposing wealth exists outside our finite planet? Maybe you think the earth is flat and extends infinitely. News flash: it's a finite planet and under no condition can infinite wealth be generated from a finite system. Do you really think you can count to infinity starting with finite numbers?

Hold everything...we're going to mine the riches of the moon and bring them back here-----to infinity and beyond !

You read my mind! Good olde Newt Gingrich has solved this problem and we're on board--to the moon! To Andromeda Galaxy and beyond!

It's our natural right to take the whole universe ain't it ?

 

[gnarlylove]

As Americans it's our inalienable right to own the world, space, and the whole damn enchilada. It means we can pollute until there is no planet left and still think it's our right to annihilate ourselves.

Thus there was a serious discussion surrounding "the loss of China" in 1949. Turns out you cannot loose something unless you owned it. No one challenged the "loss of China," they debated about whose fault it was!

 

[dilloduck]

As Americans it's our inalienable right to own the world, space, and the whole damn enchilada. It means we can pollute until there is no planet left and still think it's our right to annihilate ourselves.

Thus there was a serious discussion surrounding "the loss of China" in 1949. Turns out you cannot loose something unless you owned it. No one challenged the "loss of China," they debated about whose fault it was!

Truman blew it.