@Rook said in State of Things:
I want to find the happy middle ground. Except for over science. Businessmen and religious organization who are trying to push an anti-science agenda for their own profit or beliefs can fuck right off. Humanity will be worse off for the attempts of these people.
I find it more or less laughable, in a horrid way, that people believe Marx somehow invented socialism. Or that Marx and communists were the first anti-capitalists. Or that religious people cannot embrace science.
Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.
A religious man said this.
Our merchants and masters complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price and lessening the sale of goods. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.
A capitalist said this.
The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities.
This too.
A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation.
And this.
And that would be the fellow who wrote The Wealth of Nations.
You know, that bedrock that all those puerile Randian and foolish Austrian economists hail back to, as if they had any understanding of the social and political mores that existed in Smith's time.
So, it's sort of frustrating when "the bastions of free market capitalism" fail to understand that the "free market" only works where everyone gets rewarded for their labor.
And this makes me laugh.
Shame on you.