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noXion
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What is morality, really? Each person would have a different set of morals, I suppose. So if I think gay marriage is right, but a majority doesn't, do I have bad morals? How do you define good morals anyway?
noXion said:"Morality is about 'fairness'"- granpa
What if I think something is fair that you don't? Are my morals wrong? Or are they wrong only to you and people with similar morals? The thing about morals is that they differ.
granpa said:thats where the 'fair market value' comes in.
JoeDawg said:Unfortunately supply and demand is fairly ruthless, not to mention fickle.
Morality is arbitrary, and fairness is an illusion. Getting the best deal is formalized extortion.
granpa said:yes the price of goods and services fluctuates with supply and demand but that does not make it arbitrary or illusory.
and it certainly doesn't make it extortion.
JoeDawg said:You're mixing two sentences together. I did not say that.
To extort:
"To obtain from another by coercion or intimidation."
Its called sales.
granpa said:the whole point of a free market place is that people buy and sell things of their own freewill.
competition will drive prices down but not below the minimum that people are willing to work for.
the existence of any coercion or intimidation would completely eliminate the whole concept of a 'free' market place and therefore 'fair' market prices.
if prices are fair and non-arbitrary then morality can be also.
noXion said:What is morality, really? Each person would have a different set of morals, I suppose. So if I think gay marriage is right, but a majority doesn't, do I have bad morals?
How do you define good morals anyway?
Systems aren't people, its like mathematics vs real objects. Mathematics is an approximation, an abstraction. The system doesn't work 'properly' because it doesn't take into account how people really are and if it does, it stifles their freedom intentionally for the sake of maintaining the system.granpa said:well i didnt understand half of that but i will say this. i am not naive. i know that the system is screwed up but it is screwed up precisely because it is not 'free'. because free competition is undermined by people cheating the system.
I didn't say I wanted free anything. I said you were naive to believe in 'free' markets. There is no freedom there, at best, and it gets worse, it is a negotiation at the barrel of a gun. What is childish is pretending its not that. Life isn't fair, nor free, we don't get what we want and sometimes we don't even get what we need. We are victims of a silent universe. The freedom to choose not to starve is a very poor kind of freedom if that is what you want to call it. All we really have is each other and sometimes we kill each other for stupid reasons.you want to be 'free' of all necessities? the system is not 'fair' because you have to work? well that's a childish attitude.
And if you can't afford that fair market price? You die.you may have no choice but to buy food but as long as you have a choice of who to buy it from and those people are in honest competition with one another then the price should reflect the fair market price.
granpa said:it seems to me that the 'fair market value' establishes the idea of 'fairness'. then that 'something extra' is to place value on fairness itself.
JoeDawg said:Market value is market value, its a number. 'Fair' is a value judgment and will depend on your circumstances. If you have to fight to survive, or steal to eat, you will view the 'fairness' of society very differently, regardless of how others benefit from whatever system they care to choose. No man-made system is perfect, certainly not capitalism, therefore it is not fair in any absolute sense. As a working solution, its useful. Using words like 'fair' and 'free' with regards to markets are loosely descriptive at best, wholly inaccurate at worst. The reality of the market is the law of the jungle, the rules are just artificial, as opposed to natural.
"The will to a system is a lack of integrity"
- Nietzsche
granpa said:well that is your opinion and you keep repeating it as though that will somehow prove its truth.
Because what is fair is completely subjective, and market value involves large numbers of people who are not going agree on said price.i can understand rejecting the idea of an absolute morality but 'fair market value' is not an absolute and yet you reject even that idea. i see no rationale behind that.
That may be your definition, but the police would disagree. Stealing is taking what is not legally yours without permission regardless of how 'fairly' it is priced. Again, if you're stealing it, you probably don't consider it a fair price. And in a market economy it doesn't even have to be a majority agreement on what is fair, it has more to do with what the rich powerful people decide.so you are saying that sometimes you may have to steal in order to eat? well let's look at that. what does it mean to 'steal'? to steal is to take without paying the fair market price.
Again, I think you're being naive. How much is my labour worth? I guarantee people who work 12 hour days picking fruit in fields work 10 times as hard as your average office worker and get paid much less. I've done both, so I know. Markets are controlled and manipulated all the time, generally by those who can afford to do so, which puts those who can't, at a disadvantage, which has nothing to do with value of goods. Just look at the way a company like Microsoft crushes competition by leveraging the market instead of providing a superior product. 'Vista' sales have been driven by its default inclusion in most new PCs.a free market establishes fair market value for goods and services (including labor).
So a free market is not free and fair market value is an illusion. It doesn't live up to the hype.if you want reality to be fair then, yes, it will require something more than a free market.
If reality makes it impossible for said system to be fair, then the system isn't fair because it doesn't address reality. It may be a wonderful system, in theory, but if doesn't deliver in the real world, bottom line, it doesn't deliver.if you do have to steal in order to eat then how does that differ from what i said before. it may not be fair to you to starve but it isn't fair to the store owners to have to pay for the food you steal. its unfair all around. the system isn't being unfair. its reality itself that is unfair.
and that is perhaps a very good reason why we should go that extra step that i talked about. to actually place a high value on fairness itself. if we all valued fairness then we would be inclined to help those who reality had screwed.
i wanted to add that if i were in the position of being able to help some poor person and i knew that i wolud not profit from doing so i would ask myself 'woud this person do the same for me?'
granpa said:they don't have to agree on the price. that is the whole point. 'fair' is not about everybody being happy.
markets are controlled and manipulated? yes, i agree. didnt i agree with you several posts ago. i said that 'free' markets establish 'fair' market value. i said nothing about a market that is being manipulated. a manipulated market is not a 'free' market.
I don't agree even one bit.but given that unfairness the 'free' market does establish 'fair' market value.
I never said you did. But if you don't address the reality of situation with your 'system', then the system is ultimately unfair.i never said reality is fair.
granpa said:the buyer and seller do have to agree. i was responding to your assertion that the hypothetical free market value was unfair because 'everyone' doesn't agree on that price. if someone doesn't agree with the price then they don't have to buy it.
JoeDawg said:This is true, and hypothetically, if its food they can either die of starvation, or take it by force.
Survival of the fittest. Sounds fair to me.
granpa said:yes it is unfair. like i said, reality is unfair. it does not follow that the 'fair market value' is unfair.
if you want reality to be fair you will need more than an economic system.
JoeDawg said:Thats a cop out. Your economic system either works and is fair or its not. Claiming its fair in some fantasy land of hypotheticals doesn't cut it.
granpa said:i never said that reality is fair.
No, I say its life. Life just is. Fair is a value judgment, one you are making. You're the one talking about 'fair market value'. I think the entire concept is self-contradicting because fairness is relative. For a price to be fair, in a general way it would have to be so to every potential buyer. If its only fair to a certain number, then it is by definition, unfair to the rest.you say it is unfair that some people are born poor.
i am all for helping the poor but i don't see how doing so negates the idea of fair market value.
Well I think 'free market' is a nonsense phrase. But I've said that, so I'll address the question here instead.granpa said:if the free market value isn't the legitimate price then what is?
do you even agree that everything has a certain legitimate value? if they didnt then how would one decide what is stealing and what isnt? that would be like trying to measure things with a variable ruler.
granpa said:if someone sticks a gun in my ribs and forces me to hold up a bank then it is clear the law has been broken but who is the culprit? me, or the one holding the gun, or the bank teller who refuses to give me free money?
I place no 'fairness' on reality. Calling life unfair is either stating the obvious or saying nothing at all.as i see it your example of someone stealing to feed their family falls into the same category. clearly something here is not fair but the question is who is the culprit? the one stealing, or reality itself for forcing them to steal to eat, or the honest store owner who insists on charging for the food? and the second question is what should we do about it?
I don't blame hypotheticals. I'm saying your fair/free market doesn't exist. Its a fantasy with self-contradicting ideas. I don't blame things that don't exist.you blame the hypothetical free market system for setting prices
Bills don't spontaneously appear or fall from trees. People have to charge you first.and i simply blame reality itself for dumping large bills on people who did nothing to deserve it.
Why defend a system that doesn't work? It doesn't. It ignores reality.why should i question the legitimacy of the hypothetical free market prices
Well if you want to change things there is an easy way to deal with that ruler.without such an idea i can see no way of establishing what is fair for anyone. that wolud be like trying to measure things with a variable ruler.
establishing such a fund would of course require that we progress beyond mere self-interest.
Not a big fan of spirituality which always sounds to me like supernatural... but maybe you meant something else.it requires a non-materialistic spirituality
which, as i said before, i think amounts to the placing of value on 'fairness' itself. i don't really want to get into spirituality here. i still believe that 'hypothetical free market value' is the foundation of morality and without it it is impossible to establish any consistant understanding of fairness.
Xori said:JoeDawg, no one ever claimed that free markets were truly "free", its just a term. They're free in terms of allowing a large degree of freedom, not in being anarchy.
The way I see it, the world has limited resources, and they have to be divided among people in some way. In my opinion, prices are the fairest way. Sometimes, people get screwed by this because of unfortunate circumstances, but more often than not they just get screwed by other people who aren't following the rules, not by the market itself.
JoeDawg said:The market is set up to favor those in certain circumstances, mostly because it was set up by those people.
Xori said:I disagree that your first point logically leads to the second one.
I also disagree with the first point entirely. I think the market was set up to be an efficient economic system, and coincidentally favors some people (more intelligent people) because they are often able to take advantage of it better.
By the same principle, you could say that a game of chess is extremely unfair because the smarter person has a huge advantage. In my opinion, the game is still fair, but the results won't be a perfect distribution of resources.
JoeDawg said:I don't think intelligence is really an issue here. I know lots of intelligent people who can do the math, but can't keep their cheque book balanced. It favors those who have stuff they don't need, people who want to leverage that, to get other stuff. It favors greed and self interest.
Of course if you start out with all the pieces and your opponent only has her king, its likely you are going to win. Its also likely that you are going to win, if you have played for years and if I don't know how to play chess.