lord of flies

The Bible teaches Christians many things; the ethic of reciprocity, the principles of charity, the importance of being earnest. But it seems as though the religion has been twisted in the interest of the rich, the powerful, and the conquerors, and in general the most unkind and unjust sort of people. Jesus teaches that to be rich is to be wrong. In Luke, a version of Jesus's famous "Blessed are the poor" speech appears in Chapter 6. However, this version (presumably inspired by God himself) includes an additional note. In Luke 6:20, Jesus says "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God." But in a sharp contrast, he goes on to say in 6:24, "But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort." This is, of course, not the only time that Jesus speaks ill of the rich! Another story comes when Jesus is asked by a man to arbitrate a dispute over inheritance in Luke, chapter 12. He begins by saying "Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." He tells a story of a man who stores up much for himself on this earth, believing he is now set for life. But God appears and says "You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?" The very next story Jesus tells is to consider the animals and plants of the earth. They do not store up for themselves, but the Lord still feeds them. So, he says: "Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Jesus teaches that self-denial and charity are prime virtues, necessary to get to heaven. At one point, Jesus tells a story of a rich man and a beggar named Lazarus. Lazarus is poor, incredibly poor, and hungry all the time. The rich man is provided for, dressed in fine clothes. But when they die, the tables turn! Abraham explains why this is in Luke 16:25-26: "Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us." Note that Abraham mentions no sins the rich man has committed; as far as the story is concerned, he is damned for his wealth alone. Another story highlighting this theme appears in Matthew 19. As the story goes, a young man has great wealth, but he has kept every commandment. He has not murdered, he has not committed adultery, he has honored his mother, and so forth. What does Jesus tell the young man that he must do to "have treasure in heaven?" He says, "go, sell your possessions and give to the poor." The young man is saddened and leaves, though we are not told whether he made the right decision or not. We find a third story with such a point in Matthew 25:31-46, which I shall simply reproduce in its entirety here since it's difficult to cut down anyway: "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. "Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.' "Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?' "The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.' "Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.' "They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?' "He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.' "Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."

The market is not, as you seem to think, perfect. A worker in Bangladesh can be paid much less than a worker in New York, for obvious reasons. But wait... the free market!!! No, the free market is an idealized way to think about economics that only kind-of sort-of exists in the stock market (not completely even then). Companies can, will, and have paid people different wages for the same job. Oops! Hmm, yes, how is this example of unrestrained greed a problem of capitalism? Nope, can't be, just because I say that anything illegal must not be part of capitalism. Oh, so you can link me studies showing that if someone is paid twice as much, they work twice as hard? No, you can't, because even you know that isn't true. And who says that the market-set "workforce wages" are fair or right? Certainly not me.

Although I don't enjoy the language of economic rationalism, I suppose I'll have to resort to it here. Companies which treat their workers poorly, through low wages, no benefits, et cetera, have an advantage over those that do: they have less overhead costs. Workers who are thrust into these situations do not always have the ability or willingness to strike or appeal. Wal-Mart goes to great lengths to ensure its workers do not unionize, and illegal immigrants (a popular choice of workforce in a country with a dwindling manufacturing sector) can't exactly do so either. You have never offered an actual reason why companies would not want to pay their workers less, give them less benefits, etc, just blandly attempted to keep to your nonsense position where, of course they'll be nice to their workers! Higher wages and shorter hours are in their self-interest!

That corporations will, in fact, screw over their own workers, despite the fact that taks believes it's "not in their best interest" (hint: it is). No, I mean all that the bourgeois statists will do is **** over the third world some. It will doubtless have wildly negative effects on the world economy, especially in the third world.

He claims that corporations would never hurt their own employees. Doesn't matter whether it's today or a century ago, if corporations would do it then, they'd do it today. The only reason they don't do it (as much) in the United States is because it is against the law. Labor law violations still exist, however.

Incorrect. Human behavior is mostly social, capitalism deforms this natural tendency into insane, self-destructive behavior. People have historically proven themselves perfectly capable of egalitarian self-rule, as can be seen in the practical effectiveness of (for example) the peasant commune in Russia. "The Tragedy of the Commons" is a myth. I would rather be a black slave in 1770s Virginia than an Irish urban worker in 1870s New York. Neither has the possibility for rising in social class without violence, but at least a slave will probably have all their fingers at the end of their life. The crimes perpetrated by our society against the proletariat are huge and undeniable, unless you prefer a most vile form of historical revisionism. Fish cutters at a Canning Co in Maine. Ages range from 7 to 12. They live near the factory. The 7 year old boy in front, Byron Hamilton, has a badly cut finger but helps his brother regularly. Behind him is his brother George, age 11, who cut his finger half off while working. Ralph, on the left, displays his knife and also a badly cut finger. They and many youngsters said they were always cutting themselves. George earns a $1 some days usually 75 cents. Some of the others say they earn a $1 when they work all day. At times they start at 7 a.m. and work all day until midnight. Incorrect. Actually, all the bourgeois corporatists will allow this "global warming scare" (i.e. the real threat of climate change) to do is become yet another tool in their brutal economic repression and rape of the third world.

"Rights" are just a fiction created to justify certain social institutions which are considered valuable. I'm sure that in some other world, people would find drug prohibition (for example) to be absurd and tyrannical, because they consider consumption of drugs a "basic individual right." Yet, curiously, people do not call the United States government a tyranny for its involvement in the drug war. The point is about returning your property to the community which created you, facilitated your economic victories, and has provided every single object that you needed to get where you are today. Wrong again. That is correct, there is currently no public option.

Boo ****ing hoo. Aye, that brought a tear to me eye, it did. I think I'm starting to see a pattern in your posts. You simply cannot deal with the fact that the world is fundamentally harsh and unjust. Maybe that's why you get a boner when you go on about all those mad totalitarian state utopies? Sorry, I'm not buying whatever it is you're selling... your antics are pretty amusing, though. Of course the world is unjust. Does that mean that you should just act like a **** and piss on the poor? Based on this post, I have to assume that it does.

No, but it's difficult to quantify the proportion of people that are homeless due exclusively to circumstances outside their control. In many cases the much toted "unfairness of society" isn't to blame, but an inability/unwillingness to live otherwise, compounded by mental and drugs/alcoholism problems. With public education being freely available (and compulsory) and vocational training being easy to access, it's difficult to write off homelessness just as an unavoidable byproduct of society. And, ahem, the Army's always recruiting, I hear. It isn't the 1930's anymore, fortunately. "Just go die in idiotic imperialist wars because the leadership of your country left your school in shambles, criminalized perfectly fine consumer goods, and pissed all over the general structure of your neighborhood." - Internet poster "Too Elite For You" Endemic poverty has been sustained via targeted government action and inaction. Don't try any equivocation bull**** on me; yes, it's possible for someone in very bad conditions to make a good life for themselves in the capitalist system. It is, however, much, much less likely, and since large groups closely conform to statistics...

Yeah, I know. I mean, the Soviets had nobody educated, because everyone knew their money would disappear, so they constantly lagged far behind the United States in the space race... oh wait, they kept up despite a smaller economy. Generational wealth is literally the Worst Thing. Nope!

Too bad it does. I've yet to be asked or tested by someone, so I spit on your "proof" sir. Oh, it's true. There's an episode of Penn and Teller all about it.

Job payment is based upon supply and demand, rather than the value of the labor. For example, suppose that you are constructing a building which will be worth X amount of dollars, and the addition of one construction worker to the current team would increase the value of the project by 10%. Does the construction worker get 10% of the value of the final project, or anything approaching that or based upon that figure in any way? No, of course not. He gets minimum wage, because many people can be construction workers. The low supply base of intellectual labor is the sole reason for its apparent value; if there were far more people capable of doing actuarial science than there were jobs for it, they would get paid peanuts. Obviously, there is an upper limit: businesses are not willing to pay more than the labor's actual value for it. Thus, they always extract surplus labor, and must be destroyed in order to redistribute wealth to its rightful owners.

I'm imagining you getting home from school just after getting an F on your English assignment, and sitting down to play a game of Doom with the flying heads' textures replaced with those of Ms. Badcrumble. All the while, screaming in furious anger until you hit one, whereupon your anger suddenly subsides. "Venting" does not work, has been proven not to work, and is a nonsensical explanation for why people play video games. You play video games because they are fun and occupy your attention for at least a few minutes.

It's called labor aristocracy, actually. The poor people who subsist on government subsidies while enjoying the lush benefits of imperialism is how the government keeps the poor in line. If they're chatting on their cell phones or watching their reality television, they aren't thinking, they aren't acting, and they aren't stopping the government from doing whatever it wants. Do you think that if their income was dedicated to barely covering food and rent, they would not do what generations of American workers did: strike, riot, demand their fair share? Do you think that finance capital isn't willing to grant some tiny fragment of their income to keep that from happening?

Yes, though when Marx says "communism" it means something very different from when Lenin says "communism." Communism in his model was a point of production so great that no work was required and the stateless state formed.

Jesus Christ.

The destabilization of the capitalist system on any lasting scale is only realistically possible via structural damage. Terrorists, however, are only capable of superficial damage. Communism and socialism are closely intertwined, so I'll try to explain a bit. Socialism is a political theory created by Marx, and which developed into what's known as the "social democratic" parties, especially the SPD. The basic idea of socialism is the rebuilding of the class society and the economy to favor the urban worker - that is, the proletariat - against the capitalist class, similar to the restructuring the capitalists succeeded at doing against the aristocracy of Europe. Communism was originally a term used to describe what's basically pie-in-the-sky transhumanist crap for socialists. When the Left-Social Democrats in Russia (the Bolsheviks) successfully seized power against warmongering SRs, they founded the Communist International, and demanded everybody take a hard left position and change their party's name to a Communist Party and accept various tenants of Leninism. Communism, then, is differentiated as an ideology by its adherence to certain political theories, such as democratic centralism. You can read about the Twenty-one Conditions, the requirements for joining the Comintern, here.

Terrorists, foreign or domestic, are not capable of dealing any kind of serious harm to the United States' government, strategic interests abroad, or populace. The best they could hope for is to direct the political system's normal means, i.e. get a President elected or not, or to temporarily hurt its economy by attacks on major nerve centers of the United States.

Only a small portion of the economy is dedicated to the military. It is entirely possible to maintain military spending while your economy goes down. As to Obama and civil rights, let me just remind you about illegal, warrantless wiretaps. Terrorists are not a strategic threat to the United States. So let me ask you a simple question: what is?

The death of imperialists.

Like I said... the second largest terrorist act ever committed in the United States was done by a Christian. Also, please stop referring to human beings as "animals" unless you mean this in a strict scientific sense. It dehumanizes us and takes away from our inherent value.

Firstly, you hear news stories about it "every day" because your imperialist media is attempting to make you submit with the germ of patriotism. Secondly, the second-largest act of mass-murder in the United States was committed by a Christian on ideological grounds which many Christians in the United States agree with, and there are quite a few acts of terrorism committed by Christian groups, no matter what you'd prefer to believe. lol you know as well as I do that Al-Qaeda is to Islam as ethnic cleansers in the Balkans are to Christians. They are crazy ****ers, sure, but their actions have about as much to do with their religion as mine do. I doubt you could find a Muslim in Turkey who would react to badmouthing his religion the way that a Serbian war criminal would, either. "Major war crimes are solely based on the religion of the people who commit them, and have nothing to do with the economic, international or ideological situation of the countries involved. Stalin did what he did because he was an atheist. Al-Qaeda does what it does because they are Muslim. Pee pee doo doo I am bad at political analysis." - GreasyDogMeat, 2009 Do you know why Al-Qaeda committed the largest act of terrorism on United States soil ever? Because we are imperialist scum who have ****ed up their countries and peoples. It is not because of their religion; their religion is purely coincidental to their hatred. They may try to justify their hatred of the United States from a religious standpoint, but you'd be hard-pressed to find the part of the Koran where it says "Hey, you know the United States? Yeah, bomb the **** out of it."

"What's an abortion clinic bombing?" - GreasyDogMeat, 2009

Using the term "Islamo-nazis" or "Islamo-fascists" shows that you have no concept of what fascism, Nazism or Islam is. Also, those methods have little to nothing to do with their religion, but rather their desperation and limited resources; at best, you could argue that their religion grants them some inner peace that allows them to do such terrible things with the assurance that they are right, but the same behavior exists in widespread and disparate groups (e.g. Tamil Tigers). Fascism is a complex political philosophy with actual theoretical underpinnings; Wahhabism is just a new shade of religious "fundamentalism," where huge amounts of tradition are ignored or written off in order to inherit a backwards misinterpretation of their holy texts.

to know the author is a left-wing nutter and not worth paying attention to.lol it's always funny to see people read some centrist vaguely progressive crap and say it's from "a left-wing nutter." Look, I'm a "left-wing nutter," I believe in the complete destruction of the present class society and the creation of a new class order. That's "nutty." This is just mild centrism that is annoyed that an American politician is, once again, a corporatist laissez-faire capitalist reformist false-leftist who lied on the campaign trail. "Surprise."