All Morals & Ethics are Biased, Self-Serving - Exhibit A - The Brahmin & the Royal

[Bomb#20]

Of course we are.

You see the short 45-degree line segment connecting the long 135-degree line leading to tarsiers to the long 135-degree line leading to new world monkeys? Either the species at the top of that segment was a type of monkey, or else it was not, agreed? Well, if it was a monkey, then since it was our ancestor, humans are part of the monkey family (technically an "infraorder".) Conversely, if it was not a monkey, then its descendants evolved into monkeys twice, independently, once into the new world monkeys and separately into the old world monkeys. But evolution doesn't repeat itself like that. The same family doesn't arise twice. Ergo, we're part of the monkey family. (And if you share the modern taste for "cladistic" terminology, ergo, we are monkeys.)

We ate distantly related to EVERYTHING. Look at your own cladogram. Yes, like monkeys, we are primates, but our nearest relatives are apes . In fact we ARE apes — Great Apes. It’s no more helpful to describe us as members of the monkey family that it would be to describe us as members of the canine family, even though everything has a universal common ancestor.

I.e., you didn't understand my argument so you decided my argument was "We're in the monkey family because we're related to monkeys." That wasn't my argument. Let's try this another way. Yes, our nearest relatives are apes, and yes, we ARE apes if you like cladistic naming conventions. That doesn't conflict with what I wrote, because the ape family is a part of the monkey family; cladistically speaking, apes ARE monkeys. The point, though, is that old world monkeys such as baboons and rhesus moneys are more closely related to us and the other apes than they are to new world monkeys like marmosets and spider monkeys. There simply is no family that contains all the monkeys but doesn't contain us. Nothing like that is the case with canines. If wolves were more closely related to us than to jackals then your comparison would be apt, but in fact all the canines are closer to one another than they are to us.

 

[pood]

Humans are related to other primates including monkeys taxonomically. You said “others in the monkey family,” with reference to humans. Humans are not in the monkey family. They are in the great ape family.

 

[bilby]

Humans are related to other primates including monkeys taxonomically. You said “others in the monkey family,” with reference to humans. Humans are not in the monkey family. They are in the great ape family.

They are in both; The Great Ape familiy is in the Monkey family.

Your argument is comparable to saying "Humans are not mammals, they are apes!".

Humans are apes, apes are monkeys, monkeys are mammals, humans are both mammals and monkeys, as well as being apes.

 

[pood]

Humans are related to other primates including monkeys taxonomically. You said “others in the monkey family,” with reference to humans. Humans are not in the monkey family. They are in the great ape family.

They are in both; The Great Ape familiy is in the Monkey family.

Your argument is comparable to saying "Humans are not mammals, they are apes!".

Humans are apes, apes are monkeys, monkeys are mammals, humans are both mammals and monkeys, as well as being apes.

Humans and monkeys are in the same order — primates — but humans are in the family Hominidae. Old World and New Word monkeys are in separate families.

 

[pood]

IOW, monkeys and humans are in the same kingdom, phylum, class, and order, but not the same family.

 

[bilby]

IOW, monkeys and humans are in the same kingdom, phylum, class, and order, but not the same family.

Well, that's technically correct, (which is the best form of correct).

But I lean towards the charitable assumption that @Bomb#20 was using "family" in the less formal sense of the word.

 

[Bomb#20]

IOW, monkeys and humans are in the same kingdom, phylum, class, and order, but not the same family.

Well, that's technically correct, (which is the best form of correct).

But I lean towards the charitable assumption that @Bomb#20 was using "family" in the less formal sense of the word.

Yes, I meant

2. all the descendants of a common ancestor.
"the house has been owned by the same family for 300 years"

(OED)​

I should have picked up sooner that pood was assuming I meant the particular taxonomic rank between superfamily and subfamily. Sorry for the confusion.

 

[Politesse]

Anthropologist here. Both "ape" and "monkey" are correct. "Fish", "animal", and "Eukaryote" would also be correct, for the same reason. But not "dog". None of your direct ancestors was a canine. They are cousins, not grandparents.

As for carefully arranged charts of kingdom, class, order, etc, they were made taxonomically archaic by the advent of genetics. You'll find them in a textbook but not in a bio lab.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Anthropologist here. Both "ape" and "monkey" are correct. "Fish", "animal", and "Eukaryote" would also be correct, for the same reason. But not "dog". None of your direct ancestors was a canine. They are cousins, not grandparents.

As for carefully arranged charts of kingdom, class, order, etc, they were made taxonomically archaic by the advent of genetics. You'll find them in a textbook but not in a bio lab.

Sure of that? Are sons of bitches not human?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Change Brahmin to Royalty and now suddenly there is an about-face
The Royals are given riches, praised, idolized, looked up to & what have they done to deserve all this? Well, they were born in the right family!

And you see us supporting kings where?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The zero-sum-game thinking, it burns!

I am not engaged in zero-sum-game thinking. Your uncharitable assumptions about what people you disagree with are thinking are not necessarily correct.

Do tell. What, other than zero-sum-game thinking, could possibly induce you to believe that preventing lots and lots of customers from making themselves better off by buying so many goods and services from a handful of prestigious guys that the handful become hyper-rich would make everyone having a decent basic living easily achievable? Care to explain the cause and effect mechanism you have in mind?

The problem is it's one of faith, not reason. Specifically, the faith that there is always the possibility of a good outcome.

Most of the failings of the left can be traced back to this. There must be a good outcome, but we see a not-good situation. A situation must be the result of those with power. Thus the presence of a not-good situation is proof that those with power are doing wrong or failing to do right.

 

[Bomb#20]

Do tell. What, other than zero-sum-game thinking, could possibly induce you to believe that preventing lots and lots of customers from making themselves better off by buying so many goods and services from a handful of prestigious guys that the handful become hyper-rich would make everyone having a decent basic living easily achievable?

Where did I say anything about preventing anyone from buying anything from anyone?

You indicated you didn't think we should "allow a handful of prestigious guys to become hyper-rich." Well, it's lots and lots of customers making themselves better off by buying vast amounts of goods and services from them that makes those guys hyper-rich. For example, a seller offers to sell for $1000 a service a million people like as much as having $1500, so they take him up on it, so they're each $500 better off and he's got a billion dollars. That's the arrangement you're proposing to put a stop to, isn't it?

Care to explain the cause and effect mechanism you have in mind?

Taxation. Highly progressive taxation.

I.e., you're not prohibiting the customers from getting the $1500-worth service; you're just insisting they do it by finding somebody motivated to do it for them in return for them paying $1000 to the government? If no one has such a motivation, then you're preventing it every bit as much as if you'd prohibited it.

What highly progressive taxation rate do you have in mind? I know in the past you've advocated a 100% marginal tax bracket; is that still your thinking on the topic?

 

[pood]

Do tell. What, other than zero-sum-game thinking, could possibly induce you to believe that preventing lots and lots of customers from making themselves better off by buying so many goods and services from a handful of prestigious guys that the handful become hyper-rich would make everyone having a decent basic living easily achievable?

Where did I say anything about preventing anyone from buying anything from anyone?

You indicated you didn't think we should "allow a handful of prestigious guys to become hyper-rich." Well, it's lots and lots of customers making themselves better off by buying vast amounts of goods and services from them that makes those guys hyper-rich. For example, a seller offers to sell for $1000 a service a million people like as much as having $1500, so they take him up on it, so they're each $500 better off and he's got a billion dollars. That's the arrangement you're proposing to put a stop to, isn't it?

Care to explain the cause and effect mechanism you have in mind?

Taxation. Highly progressive taxation.

I.e., you're not prohibiting the customers from getting the $1500-worth service; you're just insisting they do it by finding somebody motivated to do it for them in return for them paying $1000 to the government? If no one has such a motivation, then you're preventing it every bit as much as if you'd prohibited it.

What highly progressive taxation rate do you have in mind? I know in the past you've advocated a 100% marginal tax bracket; is that still your thinking on the topic?

There is less income inequality and there are stronger social safety nets in Scandinavia and Western Europe than here, and in addition, universal health care — not provided among western industrialized nations only by the good ol’ US of A. And, lo and behold, they can get the same goods and services we can, frequently better, as in food.

Your vaunted billionaire class consists of a bunch of parasites and leeches. Elon Musk doesn’t provide jack shit to people. His cars suck, his hyper loop fantasy is dead, his infantile fantasy of sending millions of people to Mars is delusional, and he ran Twitter into the ground. Currently he and tRump are asset-stripping the U.S. on behalf of the oligarchs as they transform the country into an authoritarian, Christo-fascist kakistocracy and kleptocracy.

 

[bilby]

Well, it's lots and lots of customers making themselves better off by buying vast amounts of goods and services from them that makes those guys hyper-rich. For example, a seller offers to sell for $1000 a service a million people like as much as having $1500, so they take him up on it, so they're each $500 better off and he's got a billion dollars. That's the arrangement you're proposing to put a stop to, isn't it?

That's not the arrangement that exists, nor is it the arrangement to which I am trying to put a stop.

That is rather a simplistic, broad-brush summary of the current arrangement. It ignores a lot of real, important, and highly variable ancilliary factors, most of which exist to protect consumers from con-men, and/or to protect the economy from inflation.

Things like taxes and business regulations.

In your scenario, the punchline should read "...and he's got a billion dollars less taxes, fees, and interest".

So whether or not he is a billionaire is a function of how much he is taxed, what safety costs, licence fees, or other regulatory overheads he has, and what it cost him to borrow the money to make a million $1000 items in the first place.

 

[bilby]

I know in the past you've advocated a 100% marginal tax bracket; is that still your thinking on the topic?

I would certainly advocate a ceilingless tax structure, where as income tends to infinity, tax rate tends to 100%. I don't like tax brackets at all, and certainly not those that top out at comparatively low incomes, leaving a person with a taxable income of $610,000 paying the same marginal rate as a person with an income of $6,100,000 or $61,000,000 or $610,000,000.

And I am also hugely unkeen on tax structures that allow people to have effective incomes in this range while having far lower taxable incomes.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

There is less income inequality and there are stronger social safety nets in Scandinavia and Western Europe than here, and in addition, universal health care — not provided among western industrialized nations only by the good ol’ US of A. And, lo and behold, they can get the same goods and services we can, frequently better, as in food.

Your vaunted billionaire class consists of a bunch of parasites and leeches. Elon Musk doesn’t provide jack shit to people. His cars suck, his hyper loop fantasy is dead, his infantile fantasy of sending millions of people to Mars is delusional, and he ran Twitter into the ground. Currently he and tRump are asset-stripping the U.S. on behalf of the oligarchs as they transform the country into an authoritarian, Christo-fascist kakistocracy and kleptocracy.

You can find the same goods--but the average person under such a system can afford fewer goods than their American counterpart. Reducing inequality reduces the median, you can't come to a reasonable solution without taking this into consideration. The benefit and harm must be balanced--and when you insist there is no harm that ensures you will arrive at a wrong answer.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I know in the past you've advocated a 100% marginal tax bracket; is that still your thinking on the topic?

I would certainly advocate a ceilingless tax structure, where as income tends to infinity, tax rate tends to 100%. I don't like tax brackets at all, and certainly not those that top out at comparatively low incomes, leaving a person with a taxable income of $610,000 paying the same marginal rate as a person with an income of $6,100,000 or $61,000,000 or $610,000,000.

And I am also hugely unkeen on tax structures that allow people to have effective incomes in this range while having far lower taxable incomes.

Where is there anybody with an effective income of $610M? Appreciation of wealth is not income! It becomes income when you spend it, whether by selling assets or borrowing against them.

 

[pood]

There is less income inequality and there are stronger social safety nets in Scandinavia and Western Europe than here, and in addition, universal health care — not provided among western industrialized nations only by the good ol’ US of A. And, lo and behold, they can get the same goods and services we can, frequently better, as in food.

Your vaunted billionaire class consists of a bunch of parasites and leeches. Elon Musk doesn’t provide jack shit to people. His cars suck, his hyper loop fantasy is dead, his infantile fantasy of sending millions of people to Mars is delusional, and he ran Twitter into the ground. Currently he and tRump are asset-stripping the U.S. on behalf of the oligarchs as they transform the country into an authoritarian, Christo-fascist kakistocracy and kleptocracy.

You can find the same goods--but the average person under such a system can afford fewer goods than their American counterpart. Reducing inequality reduces the median, you can't come to a reasonable solution without taking this into consideration. The benefit and harm must be balanced--and when you insist there is no harm that ensures you will arrive at a wrong answer.

Maybe a lot of the goods we desire are a bunch of gimcrack bullshit that we have been inculcated to desire by the propaganda of advertising. Maybe we can do quite well and very happily, even more happily, without the shit we load up on under the pressure of consumerist culture. And maybe in addition to being happier, we would help curb climate change.

 

[bilby]

Where is there anybody with an effective income of $610M?

Who said there was?

My point is that any level of income above ~$610k is taxed at the same rate. You could earn $610 Trillion, and the last dollar would attract the exact same rate as the $610,000th.

And that rate is astonishingly low; Just 37%.

As recently as 1963, that top rate was above 90%.

Unsurprisingly, this change in tax rates has made it far easier to become a billionaire, despite its not having ever been being prohibited to sell stuff for profit in the US in the 1960s. (Which rather suggests that @Bomb#20 was foolish to assume that my argument implied such a prohibition).

 

[Bomb#20]

Where did I say anything about preventing anyone from buying anything from anyone?

You indicated you didn't think we should "allow a handful of prestigious guys to become hyper-rich." Well, it's lots and lots of customers making themselves better off by buying vast amounts of goods and services from them that makes those guys hyper-rich. For example, a seller offers to sell for $1000 a service a million people like as much as having $1500, so they take him up on it, so they're each $500 better off and he's got a billion dollars. That's the arrangement you're proposing to put a stop to, isn't it?

Care to explain the cause and effect mechanism you have in mind?

Taxation. Highly progressive taxation.

I.e., you're not prohibiting the customers from getting the $1500-worth service; you're just insisting they do it by finding somebody motivated to do it for them in return for them paying $1000 to the government? If no one has such a motivation, then you're preventing it every bit as much as if you'd prohibited it.

What highly progressive taxation rate do you have in mind? I know in the past you've advocated a 100% marginal tax bracket; is that still your thinking on the topic?

There is less income inequality and there are stronger social safety nets in Scandinavia and Western Europe than here, and in addition, universal health care — not provided among western industrialized nations only by the good ol’ US of A. And, lo and behold, they can get the same goods and services we can, frequently better, as in food.

And? bilby recited the popular opinion that allowing billionaires is why some people lack basic necessities; I pointed out that logic and empirical evidence are against him. Why are you bringing up the universal health care and strong social safety nets in Scandinavia and Western Europe? Are you trying to prove I'm right?

Norway: 12 billionaires. Denmark: 9. Sweden: 43. Finland: 7.
Spain: 29. Portugal: 1. Italy: 73. Switzerland: 41. France: 53. Monaco: 3. Ireland: 11. Britain: 55.
Netherlands: 14. Belgium 10. Luxembourg: 1. Liechtenstein: 1. Germany: 132. Austria: 9.

(Source)

Your vaunted billionaire class consists of a bunch of parasites and leeches.

Yes, we're all quite familiar with philosophies that claim a dehumanized minority group are parasites and the solution to society's problems is to get rid of them, thank you.

It is certainly true that peoples bigotry can cause them to subvert their supposed morals or principles, but that is a problem with bigotry not with morals.
...

Muslims have lower "castes" - Ahmadiyas, Hazaras - deemed not Muslim enough, hated and discriminated

My morals says this is bad. It just seems like this is bigotry. It is too bad that bigotry seems to have more power than morals do. It's weird to conclude that this means that morals are bad.

^^^^ This ^^^^