My own personal take on the economy as a "poor person" in America.

Byzantine:

Not everyone is a homosexual male.  In fact, only about 5% of the population is.  And they can't reproduce biologically.

Since the statistics I've read (coming from the UK, admittedly) seem to place homosexuals as 3% of the pop (which is matched in the PRC, of all places), wouldn't it be even less, more like 1.5%?

Lady....

 

I was going to say something funny... but I rethought.....

 

Jobs are rough... I am a dishwasher, and that took me a year and a half to get....

 

That was before the BIG fall out in the economy, mind you....

 

The job market has sucked for a long time....

Byzantine:

Not everyone is a homosexual male.  In fact, only about 5% of the population is.  And they can't reproduce biologically.

So there doesn't seem to be any compelling need to listen to them.

spoken like a democrat

ladyattis:

Polls have shown that most couples (in the US) would prefer to have one parent at home in their own household

But the gov't sends the cops and forces the two parents to work. I see.

ladyattis:

Juan:

Do you think that women are naturally predestined to 'raise children' and cook ?

In terms of biology? Yes. In terms of training, experience, and values? Not necessarily.

Is this a bad joke ? Women are biologically determined to COOK ?

Also, you didn't know that children can be raised by anyone ? There are no special biological abilities needed to raise children (as opposed to give birth to babies...).

Not when it comes down to keeping a roof over one's head and food enough in the fridge for more than a day for everyone in your household.

Even in that case, people can arrange things in order to stay at home if they want. Not to mention that the amount of 'families' who need two people working in order to avoid starvation is probably close to ZERO. So, is it acceptable to have a State enforce via inflation and taxation a disintegration of social units? I didn't say that.

ladyattis:

Juan:

No, absent intervention, the 'family' would not have a definite and 'natural' structure in which the male parent is the only one who works.

Prove it.

LOL. Prove that your conservative dogma is true.

ladyattis:

Juan:

Nobody is economically independent in a market society.

Prove it.

Are you joking ? Do I need to teach to somebody familiar with political economy what division of labor is ?

Juan:

But the gov't sends the cops and forces the two parents to work. I see.

Juan:

Is this a bad joke ? Women are biologically determined to COOK ?

 

Juan:

Even in that case, people can arrange things in order to stay at home if they want. Not to mention that the amount of 'families' who need two people working in order to avoid starvation is probably close to ZERO.

You're still evading the fact that taxes and inflation do indeed force people to maintain more than two jobs at any given time (both single individuals and parents). It's even becoming common to find people with three jobsp to maintain their living standard. Thus, you're evading the point entirely. So, refer to Mr. Bolger above as to why you're fracking off the wagon of intellectual discussion!

Byzantine:

Not everyone is a homosexual male.  In fact, only about 5% of the population is.  And they can't reproduce biologically.

So there doesn't seem to be any compelling need to listen to them.

Well, first, it's 3% total pop as one person stated earlier, but more importantly, I'm a bisexual that leans heavily on the pink side of the spectrum (aka I liek teh butt secks...). So, for me it's not a matter of giving one's opinion on the familt unit structure has much to do with one's sexuality as to whether their opinion is valid or not.

Rather, it's whether one accepts the fact that some folks want to hang out together more than just a night at a bar. Some folks want to lay down roots and make connections that become the basis of a family. Hell, how many non-genetically direct relations are there in a family? Probably quite a few, considering the Catholic tradition of god-parents. Family isn't the atomic family. It's all possible configurations of social relations that has some biological aspect of reproduction involved (to make children). So what's the heart of family is the capacity for a group of individuals to come together and care for children. What folks like Juan don't grasp is that family isn't this evil bane of liberty.

It's the fact that families are diverse in configuration is what makes liberty worthwhile. That my neighbor may be in a polyandry familial structure compared to another neighbor who focuses on some Mormom whacky polygamy configuration both being in a sharp contrast to the family which I was raised, thus the specified or typified configuration is not important. It's the freedom to make a family that's important. Just as the freedom to property and self-determination (as the freedom to self-determine what kind of family (if one should want one)) is similarly important. Juan seems to want a world full of free peoples, but none free to make a family they see fit as natural to their preferences and outlook. Maybe I'm strawmanning on that point, but that's all I can conceive as the thrust of his ideas (as he's never presented his own take on the nature of family and society).

Juan wants a flat society.  The truth of the matter is that it is the State, and only the State, that is the agency heavy enough to flatten everybody underneath it into a non-hierarchical social order.  Liberals love this vision, because they naturally see themselves on the winning team, ordering all the schleps underneath them to cease their reactionary, bigoted ways.

The nuclear family is an artificial model, enabled by the post-WWII vision of mom, dad,  two kids and their car, living out in suburbs that never would have been built in a truly free market.

Polygamous society does not work.  A few older men monopolize sexual relations with the women so all the young, productive men leave.  It's Big Man society, like Africa and Utah before the latter realized the model was not sustainable.

Polyandrous societies are similarly dystopic.  Black America is an example of this, and secular democracy is working hard to make sure this trickles up.

Human beings are social, hierarchical animals.  They are also extremely bio-diverse, and in a free society people will seek their own level.  That is the beauty of a free, i.e., organic society:  we all get to be big fish; it's just a matter of choosing the right pond.  That's why people segregate themselves by a variety of criteria whenever and wherever they are allowed.  It is the State, with its perverse egalitarianism and civil rights laws, that takes away everyone's safe harbors.

ladyattis:

You're still evading the fact that taxes and inflation do indeed force people to maintain more than two jobs at any given time (both single individuals and parents).

Yes, if they want to maintain their arbitrary "standard of living", which, get this, might have been artificially raised by interventions on the credit market, for instance.

By the way, you evaded all the points I made.

ps : I'd love to hear your 'biological' theory showing that women are genetically endowed with cooking abilities.

ladyattis:

but that's all I can conceive as the thrust of his ideas (as he's never presented his own take on the nature of family and society).

Well, I'm not much of a social planner after all...As to the nature of society, come on, there's no such thing as society, only individuals. All I can tell you, and I suppose you already know it, is that 'society' should be purely voluntary cause individuals are not to be coerced.

So let me modify this a bit

I:

No, absent intervention, the 'family' would not have a definite and 'natural' structure. in which the male parent is the only one who works.

Doesn't seem very different from this

You:

It's the fact that families are diverse in configuration is what makes liberty worthwhile.

So, I'm not sure what the quarrel is about. Although I might point that you have it backwards : given freedom people can choose what they want not what the theocrats dictate.

Byzantine:

The nuclear family is an artificial model, enabled by the post-WWII vision of mom, dad, two kids and their car, living out in suburbs that never would have been built in a truly free market.

Polygamous society does not work. A few older men monopolize sexual relations with the women so all the young, productive men leave. It's Big Man society, like Africa and Utah before the latter realized the model was not sustainable.

Polyandrous societies are similarly dystopic. Black America is an example of this, and secular democracy is working hard to make sure this trickles up.

So....what's the natural and proper system...according to you ?

Byzantine:

Polygamous society does not work.  A few older men monopolize sexual relations with the women so all the young, productive men leave.  It's Big Man society, like Africa and Utah before the latter realized the model was not sustainable.

Yet many countries and tribes on Earth have polygamous familial institutions. And many of these have produced many economic ventures of their own in the past and at present

Byzantine:

Polyandrous societies are similarly dystopic.  Black America is an example of this, and secular democracy is working hard to make sure this trickles up.

Similar to Polygamy, there are nations and tribes predicated on these values in a sustainable format. Unless for both cases you can categorically prove their unsustainability a priori you don't have a leg to stand on. Whereas in terms of both anthropology and Praxeological reasoning I have the high ground, Anakin. ;)

 

Juan:

As to the nature of society, come on, there's no such thing as society, only individuals.

So there's no such thing as the Internet, only computers? You know what Daniel Dennett calls your sort of reasoning? Greedy Reductionism. If we go by your logic, there's no human mind, just neurons firing all at different times. Atoms bumping into each other at different times and spaces. And so on.

Understand that there are two kinds of hierarchies in terms of existence: epistemological and ontological. In terms of society, society is an epistemological, in that we can perceive that it is not a unit on its own in terms of exclusive features, but at the same time there are unique phenomena that cannot be instantiated by singular individuals alone (in asocial formats). Thus, any assertion that society doesn't exist in terms of human existence and socialization is down right retarded (to put it mildly). As such, I argue for an IDIC (Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations) styled thesis of consideration of societies and human interactions because in terms of how societies and social interactions form, they are not predicated on a priori principles in the kind of prescription/normative thinking. Rather they depend on the same features of the action axiom (and even Rand's own premise of integration and differentiation in terms of personal epistemologies), so there's much room for variation.

Juan:

So, I'm not sure what the quarrel is about. Although I might point that you have it backwards : given freedom people can choose what they want not what the theocrats dictate.

Or more properly stated; that all social interactions and institutions are forged on the conditions set in the environment, both personally and impersonally.

ladyattis:

So there's no such thing as the Internet, only computers? You know what Daniel Dennett calls your sort of reasoning? Greedy Reductionism. If we go by your logic, there's no human mind, just neurons firing all at different times. Atoms bumping into each other at different times and spaces. And so on.

Wrong analogies : fail. Now, you know what the holistic views of 'society' are called no ?

Understand that there are two kinds of hierarchies in terms of existence: epistemological and ontological. In terms of society, society is an epistemological, in that we can perceive that it is not a unit on its own in terms of exclusive features, but at the same time there are unique phenomena that cannot be instantiated by singular individuals alone (in asocial formats). Thus, any assertion that society doesn't exist in terms of human existence and socialization is down right retarded (to put it mildly).

I'm only concerned with relations between individuals. Those relations of course exist. No, there is still no 'society.'

As such, I argue for an IDIC (Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations) styled thesis of consideration of societies and human interactions because in terms of how societies and social interactions form, they are not predicated on a priori principles in the kind of prescription/normative thinking.

... Not sure what you mean. Anyways, I'm only concerned with voluntary interaction, which by definition is something that happens (or not) at the individual level. I don't see where infinite combinations and other infinite stuff fits in. We're not talking about maths are we ? This is not computer science either.

Juan:

Wrong analogies : fail. Now, you know what the holistic views of 'society' are called no ?

No, I don't. Please explain.

Juan:

I'm only concerned with relations between individuals. Those relations of course exist. No, there is still no 'society.'

I think we're still talking past each other. Society is the network of individuals that interact and/or aggregate/defer decision making to others.

Juan:

Anyways, I'm only concerned with voluntary interaction, which by definition is something that happens (or not) at the individual level. I don't see where infinite combinations and other infinite stuff fits in.

IDIC in terms of the fact that no one given configuration of social institution(s) isn't inherent to the [social] universe of human interactions.

Juan:

We're not talking about maths are we ? This is not computer science either.

You're confusing what I'm talking about. In fact, half of what I speak of is in fact purely in the sphere of Anthropology in as much as I'm describing a class of relations in which human beings seem to have adopted in history (past and present). Similarly, I'm avoiding any final judgments as to which are optimal or otherwise as no universal theory of social interaction beyond Praxeology has been formulated with any success.

 

I suppose they are sustainable, as in the Ivory Coast or Yemen will probably keep their TFR at replacement.  Not that people who use phrases like 'a priori' will ever live there.

The experiment of polyandry in the West has given us black America's welfare-dependent matriarchies and, on the SWPL side of the tracks, cratering birth rates.

Byzantine:

I suppose they are sustainable, as in the Ivory Coast or Yemen will probably keep their TFR at replacement.  Not that people who use phrases like 'a priori' will ever live there.

Yet Cote d'Ivoire isn't as backwater as you might assume.Yemen, same thing.

Byzantine:

The experiment of polyandry in the West has given us black America's welfare-dependent matriarchies and, on the SWPL side of the tracks, cratering birth rates.

Still, you have to look at countries that have matrinial(sp?) and matriarchal structures like Afghanistan. They're not the top of the technological world, but prior to the Taliban and other outsider influences, they had a relatively peaceful existence (and was the birthplace of the Agricultural Revolution, some thousands of years ago).  So, I suspect the formation of such structures weren't due to welfarism, but rather due to lack of technologies and techniques to know who was who in terms of family. Thus, to insure proper ownership transference of capital (land was this for them), knowing for sure you had a mother and who she was a better bet than following some hoodoo religious tripe (of their day...).

Juan:

So....what's the natural and proper system...according to you ?

Start with basic biology and work from there.

Juan:

ladyattis:

Juan:

Do you think that women are naturally predestined to 'raise children' and cook ?

In terms of biology? Yes. In terms of training, experience, and values? Not necessarily.

Is this a bad joke ? Women are biologically determined to COOK ?

Lady, honestly, I am completely shocked you would make such a ridiculous statement. What presupposes that women are biologically determined to cook? All I see are social norms which can be accepted or denied.

Cain, read the quote right, you're not absorbing what was said. *sigh*

ladyattis:

Cain, read the quote right, you're not absorbing what was said. *sigh*

Stop writing in such an obscure fashion! Can women raise children and cook? Yes. Are they made for it [implying that they are naturally assumed to do these functions]? No

Are you saying the former or latter?