Replies

Oh good grief, unspun -- the freaking false dichotomy of "Capitalism" versus "Altruism" rears its ugly head "one more time"....

It isn't a false dichotomy, and your sloppy denigration doesn't make it one. The world you now live in is proving the point, in reality. The tax burden is over 40% and growing. No nation has long survived with a tax burden over 25% percent. Those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it. The pity is I am subject to your collective blindness. And you made the point yet again. Only an irrational, straw man, ad homimem, phony assertion without proof attack contrary to all the reasoned arguments I presented. Just the kind of thing I'd expect from a dyed in the wool altruist.

I gather somebody's been reading Lord Keynes -- and Ayn Rand -- 'way too long. Time perhaps to visit a far more interesting contemporary of Keynes'-- that would be one Joseph Shumpeter.

Keynes is refuted almost daily here:

http://www.mises.org/default.asp

Subscribe to their daily newsletter, learn something outside your narrow prejudices.

And if your following comments truly reflect Shumpeter's thoughts, he isn't worth reading either.

It probably isn't underrated. It is probably rated properly, which is why it is ignored.

Do you suppose you are winning this "debate" with betty boop? You're not. You're attacking her and mistaking graciousness for lack of depth in the process. You accuse her of being an agglomeration of filters, yet that is precisely what I see in your posts. And those filters are not always consistent, one with the other.

Take, for example, "naturalism". To the Materialists, natural means physical and physical includes matter and energy, only. To you, natural includes intangibles such as will. This is semantics, not substance. Words are not the thing, they are a mental construct and not "natural". If they, words and will, are defined as natural, as you hve done, if natural includes "all of the above", we lose the ability to discern, the very basis for all analysis and discussion. Here's your comment:

You simply cannot take a phenomenon like 'will' and define it as something other than 'natural' without defining away your ability to discern it, ([I] get so tired of saying this) BY DEFINITION ...

Well, wrong. This is wordplay only. And you are ranting. What, LW, is your problem?

learn something outside your narrow prejudices

bb really is one of the most gracious debaters on this forum and I am happy to say so. She keeps a level of decorum without which society is impossible. As Flannery O'Conner said (I paraphrase) "Love fails--it always does--and that is why we need civility. Let's be human before we ever start bringing incense to the throne of reason.