Quote from: Meta Cognition on January 16, 2015, 01:59:58 PM

Quote from: Dustin xLilD on January 16, 2015, 01:39:04 PM

That's not going to happen unless you want to trade out Israel as an ally.

Not to mention, Iran has funded Hezbollah and had a part in the 1983 Beirut bombing. The second of which, I'm fairly certain, should constitute an act of war.

I'm sure there are hundreds of potential acts of wars.

Even if it weren't, I don't see why we should try to ally ourselves with a country which built a monument to commemorate the martyrs who carried it out.

That's not going to happen unless you want to trade out Israel as an ally.

Over my dead body.

Not to mention, Iran has funded Hezbollah and had a part in the 1983 Beirut bombing. The second of which, I'm fairly certain, should constitute an act of war.

I always find it amusing that our left (American left) is basically most European country's moderate right.

That's not really true, to be honest.

It only seems like that at a cursory glance, which is necessarily influenced by history and culture. I'll agree that the American public is certainly more right-wing than the European public, and thus our right-wing politics are more moderated, but looking at certain policies in the Democratic Party does belie a degree of genuine Leftism.

and the lack of an actual left...

>obama named most liberal senator by national journal
>implemented a stimulus bigger than the new deal
>raised tariffs on south korean steel by 13pc, and other steel by 118pc
>has been using federal funding to implement a national agenda
>expanded medicare/medicaid at the expense of certain states
>not to mention bush increased federal spending by 35pc

Yeah, there's no left-wing in American politics.

There's really nothing inherently wrong with a two-party system.

America, however, is a special case. It's political system is really quite unique and, if I say so myself, incredibly interesting. It's essentially a melting pot of diverse variables that causes high levels of partisanship.

And the capitalists don't give a shit.

Because nobody else does, that's the point.

a capitalist system does not care.

That's not true, it cares exactly how much the society cares.

it does not care about resources, it does not care about a sick society. It only exists to make money.

Except wisely using resources and increasing quality of life are two of the biggest justifications for capitalism; it's pretty much the entire reason Hume was a liberal. The entire point of capitalism is that responsible management of your assets preserves natural resources as well as engenders profit. Have you ever seen people organised in such a way by anything other than a profit motive? The only example I know of is the Free Territory in Ukraine, and even then it was only due to outside threats from Bolshevism.

Capitalism has no direction. It has no focus.

Again, it has exactly the amount of direction and focus as the society in which it is being used. You can't really look at America and a third-world country and say the first has an equal lack of direction and focus in comparison to the latter; the problem with the latter is almost always that there is never enough capitalists populating the economy. Even if I think we agree that the West (and the entire world, I suppose) is in a state of moral or cultural decadence, I think it's incredibly lazy to look at a complex system like capitalism and place the blame there.

Fuck, most of the problems with capitalism aren't a result of capitalism.

After having read through the whole thing, it really doesn't seem that consequential to be honest. There are a few things in his piece that seem--at least to my knowledge--to be factually inaccurate, and he relies more on trying to blame the West's attitudes (or the Islamic communities' circumstances) for extremism, instead of the actual, propositional content of Islamic beliefs.

Capitalism is consumption based at it's core. Consume more, spend more, earn more. This leads to just about everything in today's world being based around consumption. It's unhealthy. People spend their lives working in shitty jobs to make money. What do they do with it? Part of it goes for all the taxes and costs under the sun. Part of it goes towards paying for neccessities. And what little you have left is spent on things you'd like.

And you never have enough to get all the stuff you want. So a lot of people get trapped in mortgages and credit. And then they get stuck in the yearly cycle of new rehashed shit with a few extra bits thrown on to make it different. And in order to pay off all that stuff on credit?

You work more.

And not only is everything based around consumption, it's based around poor quality. Products are released that are cheaply made. They're designed to break. And they break. In a capitalist society, what do you do with something that breaks? You throw it away. Buy another one because you can because it's easier to go out and buy it brand new then repair it yourself or god forbid make something of actual quality yourself.

Part of the problem with today's society is capitalism. It's a big problem actually.

I don't see how capitalism--the system which has caused 1pc of human history to have 99pc of the wealth, and facilitated a massive increase in leisure time--can be considered part of the problem even under your own paradigm. Capitalism isn't some sort of culture which has been imposed on us, it's merely a process of supplying demand. Is an excessive consumer culture good? No, of course not, but the problem is the demand on the part of the consumers not the capitalists responding to those demands.

You'll never, ever get rid of a consumption-based economy. The best you'll do is remove the need for labour.

Yes, you can only pick one and they have to be real. Alive or dead.

Alan Greenspan for me.

I'm sure Meta is going to bring out some autistic economic policy or historical fact that is somehow going to debunk what I said

Only where you blame the middle east's failings on imperialism.

There's no problem with you playong devils advocate, Dustin, you just do it in the stupidest of ways. If you want to do it, make a thread asking for rebuttals against a certain argument and tell us you'll be playing the role of the opposition.

The way you do it now just makes you look like a cunt

Quote from: Meta Cognition on January 16, 2015, 01:55:36 AM

If time were infinite, then an infinite amount of time would need to pass before this exact point--or any other point in anybody else's life. It's not that we can't 'partake' in time, it's just logically necessary for time to have a beginning, otherwise enough time would never pass in order to facilitate our partaking in it.

How do you know an infinite amount of time hasn't already happened, and we're simply in the continuation of it, and that it will continue on infinitely after our existence. That's what I'm not grasping here.

Because we know when the big bang occurred. That was the literal beginning of time.

A scientific law is a verifiable statement

No.

OT: That was actually incredibly interesting. Is there any evidence for black-hole production efficacy correlating with life production efficacy? Could you explain the link some more? I'm no physicist.

That is an assumption, though. What makes you think this just isn't our time to be here? We're pretty close to killing ourselves off and them we will be just another blip in the universe.

I'm not saying that. I'm making the point isn't infinite, because if it were we wouldn't be here discussing it. It's not a case of 'not being our time', it'd just be logically impossible.

Shock therapy is actually quite effective, it's just seen as unethical by some idiot liberals. And prayer might work, you don't know if He is real or not until you die.

Just shut the fuck up.

It's times like this when I think you should actually just be barred from Serious, since all you do is alternate between being le rusemaster and then having to tell us when you're really serious.