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RobbyPants
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Post by RobbyPants »

Occluded Sun wrote:If all you grasshoppers insist on discussing ways to live off the ants, I'm going to have to start posting pictures of Ayn Rand everywhere.

Is that really what you want?
The point of the ant and grasshopper story is to teach people to save while things are going well so they can use the surplus to help them through the inevitable bad times.

Why you are threatening us with Ayn Rand memes while promoting Keynesian economics is beyond me.
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Maxus
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Post by Maxus »

And Ayn Rand memes, OC? You mean like this?

Image

And poor. Let's not forget she died poor. Or espoused rugged individuality and personal action and non-interference in the lives of others but ejected people from her personal circle for disagreeing with her. Or that she made her husband wear a bell on his foot so she could hear him when she was writing. Or that when he could sell paintings, she didn't want him to sell them because she couldn't bear to be parted with him.

Or, since you may need the TL;DR

-Massive, massive hypocrite who ruined her own life and the lives of almost everyone she associated with socially by her hypocrisy.
-Her idea of a perfect man was based on a serial killer
-Failed by her own standards, i.e., live independent and die rich
-Crappy writer.
-Said smoking was healthy, died of heart disease and lung cancer.

If there's any single point to admire about Ayn Rand, it's her willpower. She kept going on (even if she did get Social Security and Medicare at the end, a sort of compromising of her beliefs). But her whole life proved that her way doesn't work: An indomitable will won't keep you healthy or happy if what you're aiming that will at amounts to being a cancer to yourself and others.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.

--The horror of Mario

Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik »

Maxus wrote:(even if she did get Social Security and Medicare at the end, a sort of compromising of her beliefs).
She started by compromising her beliefs by borrowing tons of money from family, and then never paying it back. Self made my dick.
DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?
The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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Maxus
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Post by Maxus »

Kaelik wrote:
Maxus wrote:(even if she did get Social Security and Medicare at the end, a sort of compromising of her beliefs).
She started by compromising her beliefs by borrowing tons of money from family, and then never paying it back. Self made my dick.
Ooh, right, right. Forgot about that one.

Edit: So, OC, as you might gather, I'm not impressed or terrified by Ayn Rand. Try it.
Last edited by Maxus on Sun Sep 20, 2015 11:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.

--The horror of Mario

Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
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Darth Rabbitt
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Post by Darth Rabbitt »

Pseudo Stupidity wrote:This Applebees fucking sucks, much like all Applebees. I wanted to go to Femboy Hooters (communism).
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Maxus
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Post by Maxus »

I found this very useful as well for a quick brush-up on her life: Webcomic biography of Ayn Rand

I knew she knew Alan Greenspan when he was young, but I didn't know the shit about how she treated her husband.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.

--The horror of Mario

Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
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Prak
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Post by Prak »

Pseudo Stupidity wrote:I could pay somebody to follow me around and hum jaunty tunes.
Where, and in what form should I send my resume?
nockermensch wrote:never doing menial work again and all the sadistic kicks you can get from ordering powerless people around.
If you're really good, you can get them to orally pleasure you also, and then get them to pay you.

But that's professional domming, and totally different.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
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You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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Occluded Sun
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Post by Occluded Sun »

What, no calls for the rich ant's bounty to be fairly distributed to the poor grasshopper? Doesn't the grasshopper deserve a good life as much as the ant does? Instead he's facing starvation and death by hypothermia as a cold, cold winter sets in.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

So you think the rich deserve their wealth because they have wealth? What are you some sort of fanatical fucking BUDDHIST?
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Occluded Sun
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Post by Occluded Sun »

I fail to see how blindly assuming the rich do not deserve their wealth is any better than blindly assuming they do would be.

What IS clear is that the policies you primitive screwheads claim to favor takes property away by force and gives it to people who have done nothing for it - even if some individuals might arguably deserve the money, you've made it clear that all someone needs to do to 'deserve' largess is exist.
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Eikre
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Post by Eikre »

I mean, up until adolescence, that's actually the pitch that literally everyone makes to secure their own survival. So... Yeah, man.
This signature is here just so you don't otherwise mistake the last sentence of my post for one.
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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik »

Your belief that people should have to do some kind of work to deserve the right to continue eating is outdated in a world in which one person can farm enough food for thousands. This isn't the feudal age, making up make work for people is not superior to letting them pursue their own goals.
DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?
The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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Prak
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Post by Prak »

OS, you still have the allegory backwards. If you're going to apply the "Grasshopper and the Ant" to real world economics, the people who spend all year working to survive, the ants, are the lower classes, while the people who manage to charm the workers into letting them free-load, the grasshopper, are the wealthy elite. My parents are ants, Trump and Mittens are the grasshoppers who want them to give them shit they didn't work for.

But, to address the latter point of "deserving wealth," sure, I'll make the bold claim that there is someone who deserves wealth, and those people are the people who actually work for it. No one deserves to go hungry or struggle to keep a roof over their heads, but the people who spend 8+ hours a day on their feet dealing with entitled shithead customers and their screaming brat larvae deserve it far less than people who were born with silver trust-funds in their mouths and have only "worked" by managing hedge funds and trying to not fuck up too badly daddy's company they were nepotistically hired into to
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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Post by Leress »

But, to address the latter point of "deserving wealth," sure, I'll make the bold claim that there is someone who deserves wealth, and those people are the people who actually work for it. No one deserves to go hungry or struggle to keep a roof over their heads, but the people who spend 8+ hours a day on their feet dealing with entitled shithead customers and their screaming brat larvae deserve it far less than people who were born with silver trust-funds in their mouths and have only "worked" by managing hedge funds and trying to not fuck up too badly daddy's company they were nepotistically hired into to
The only problem I see with this is if a person has made money and wants to give their kids a better life. You say that people only deserve it when they have worked for it, so what about when they have it. What are they suppose to do with it? Hell if I got wealth by managing hedge funds or investments it doesn't mean that the person didn't work since making investments and the like takes a lot of work, just not the physical kind.
Wealth is not determined by how much shit you get when trying to obtain it. You really can't blame people who are born into wealth just the same as blaming someone born into poverty. Now you can total judge for what they become later though.

I agree with you on OS does not know how allegories work.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

You don't need to get into esoteric quibbles about the merits of 100% inheritance taxes that are never going to be a thing to dismiss this dunce's insanely ignorant ranting.

He believes that being rich proves merit, proves that you are deserving, and proves that you personally are hard working and by extension that those who are not rich are not hard working.

I'd refer to Marx, and specifically the "became the foundations of modern economics" bits rather than the "controversial" bits, and point out that yeah actually all physical wealth is literally created basically exclusively by the working classes.

But even THAT is two high brow for this idiot.

Just point out that he actually apparently thinks RICH PEOPLE SPEND ALL THEIR TIME WORKING REALLY FUCKING HARD. And he thinks POOR PEOPLE HAVE IT EASY AND JUST LAY BACK AND RELAX.

That should be enough right there to point at him and laugh at him, oh, you know FOREVER.
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Wed Sep 23, 2015 12:04 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by MGuy »

Occluded Sun wrote:I fail to see how blindly assuming the rich do not deserve their wealth is any better than blindly assuming they do would be.

What IS clear is that the policies you primitive screwheads claim to favor takes property away by force and gives it to people who have done nothing for it - even if some individuals might arguably deserve the money, you've made it clear that all someone needs to do to 'deserve' largess is exist.
I have yet to see you make an actual point. You make this statement which I guess you try to make sound super scary but you don't just come out and say poor people should starve. So I will ask you directly so you can be nice and open about it ( and I can have a new quote). Do you believe that it is better that anyone who hasn't "worked hard enough" be allowed to starve?
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Post by hyzmarca »

PhoneLobster wrote:You don't need to get into esoteric quibbles about the merits of 100% inheritance taxes that are never going to be a thing to dismiss this dunce's insanely ignorant ranting.

He believes that being rich proves merit, proves that you are deserving, and proves that you personally are hard working and by extension that those who are not rich are not hard working.

I'd refer to Marx, and specifically the "became the foundations of modern economics" bits rather than the "controversial" bits, and point out that yeah actually all physical wealth is literally created basically exclusively by the working classes.

But even THAT is two high brow for this idiot.

Just point out that he actually apparently thinks RICH PEOPLE SPEND ALL THEIR TIME WORKING REALLY FUCKING HARD. And he thinks POOR PEOPLE HAVE IT EASY AND JUST LAY BACK AND RELAX.

That should be enough right there to point at him and laugh at him, oh, you know FOREVER.
Well, the whole "farmers and artisans create wealth, bankers and merchants are useless parasites feeding off of their betters" thing is mostly bullshit.


A highly paid CEO is doing an very demanding high-pressure job. It's not back breaking, but it's certainly stressful.

A trust fund kid, on the other hand, isn't. But he's living off his parents' choices.

The problem that at the opposite end of the spectrum you get loading sixteen tons for more debt. I don't think anyone is arguing that wealthy people aren't adding value to the system. The argument is that the value they add is not proportionate to the value they extract.
Last edited by hyzmarca on Wed Sep 23, 2015 12:56 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Prak
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Post by Prak »

Leress wrote:
But, to address the latter point of "deserving wealth," sure, I'll make the bold claim that there is someone who deserves wealth, and those people are the people who actually work for it. No one deserves to go hungry or struggle to keep a roof over their heads, but the people who spend 8+ hours a day on their feet dealing with entitled shithead customers and their screaming brat larvae deserve it far less than people who were born with silver trust-funds in their mouths and have only "worked" by managing hedge funds and trying to not fuck up too badly daddy's company they were nepotistically hired into to
The only problem I see with this is if a person has made money and wants to give their kids a better life. You say that people only deserve it when they have worked for it, so what about when they have it. What are they suppose to do with it? Hell if I got wealth by managing hedge funds or investments it doesn't mean that the person didn't work since making investments and the like takes a lot of work, just not the physical kind.
Wealth is not determined by how much shit you get when trying to obtain it. You really can't blame people who are born into wealth just the same as blaming someone born into poverty. Now you can total judge for what they become later though.

I agree with you on OS does not know how allegories work.
No, that's a good point. I oversimplified, and there's totally merit in using money to better the lives of your children.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

hyzmarca wrote:I don't think anyone is arguing that wealthy people aren't adding value to the system. The argument is that the value they add is not proportionate to the value they extract.
Subtle hedging isn't required for responding to the guy who thinks rich people work really hard and poor people have it easy.

The minimal contribution that the rich guys who get most of the money from your shoe purchases make to actually creating those shoes may well be a real (pretty fucking tiny) thing, but it is too insignificant to bother bringing up in response to, again, a guy who is literally claiming the poor people who actually make those shoes are getting a free ride on unfortunate hard working rich investors who get basically all the profits from the shoe sales.
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Post by ...You Lost Me »

http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/inde ... signs.html

Portland gets veeeeery close to a $15/hr minimum wage, while increasing wages across the state. I'm happy about it.
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