Schaffer article: How Fundies enabled the 1% to exploit the 99%

[lucrezaborgia]

In a consumerist economy...if the majority of people can't afford the products that the 1% sell, how will they continue to profit? It is really income redistribution or is it recycling money? It's not like the people getting child credits and whatnot hoard that money.

Also, wasn't the turn of the century a time when business had free reign? That wasn't exactly a utopia.

[myotch]

Laissez Faire capitalism has never, ever been tried in America. There were times when there was less government intrusion, sure. But "free reign"? Nope.

The period after the Civil War up to the Great Depression still had considerable government intervention in the markets. Robber barons and monopolies were created by government acts, cronyism, and loopholes begging to be taken advantage of - as much as any personal greed you can measure from that time period.

As far as "can't afford what the 1% sell", I don't recall electricity, cell phones, cable or satellite or the TV's that play their programming, or automobiles being in Maslov's hierarchy of needs. A lot of what we buy is unnecessary to our survival, and a big drain on the household budgets. "Convenience" comes at a great price.

[captain_solo]

Quote:Further... there was a horrible thing that happened... they told the kids that marijuana was dangerous--BOO!!!! And then they smoked it and...
they giggled, they read LORD OF THE RINGS, they ate Cheetos, and that's about it. So, the kids think, maybe they were lying about the other drugs too? As William F Buckley said, when you turn otherwise law-abiding people into criminals, you reduce respect for ALL law. And when you tell kids that something is dangerous that is not? You teach them that such warnings are all crap, and THEY AREN'T. But like the boy who cried wolf, they are no longer going to listen to you when you warn them about meth and cocaine and so forth.

And I speak from experience on that too.

interestingly enought, this paragraph, in a totally separate context, explains the intellectual (and resulting moral) total failure of fundamentalism - and explains the mass exodus now occurring with my generation and younger out of IFB churches - the Mogs lied, and belief in their gnostic heresy died.


The Biblical version of this paragraph goes something like..."Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence. " Colossians 2:23

[paul]

(10-27-2011 04:30 PM)captain_solo Wrote:  interestingly enought, this paragraph, in a totally separate context, explains the intellectual (and resulting moral) total failure of fundamentalism - and explains the mass exodus now occurring with my generation and younger out of IFB churches - the Mogs lied, and belief in their gnostic heresy died.

I call it "fornicating in the hallways". A general term to reference the fact that what we were told was quite simply not true. We, as fundy teens, were led to believe that, were we to go to the evil secular universities, we would have to step over and around gyrating naked couples in the hallways to get to our dorm rooms. And that was during the middle of the day, while classes were going on; who knows what evils would happen at night or :gasp: on the weekends. We (and our parents) bought it and off to fundy-U we went, content that ours was the "better" path.