Re: capitalist religion (was: NANO: _Forbes_ cover story)

From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Thu Jul 19 2001 - 08:56:51 MDT


On Wednesday, July 18, 2001 5:19 AM Anders Sandberg asa@nada.kth.se wrote:
> > I feel the need to repeat that I am not against capitalism -- I think it
is
> > very cool. I just don't think it is the answer to everything. And
> > capitalism as religion scares the willies out of me, just as all
religions do.
>
> Well, money is a measure of value, and isn't value exactly what all
> religions strive to achieve? :-)

I think this is confusing the issue. Generally, ethical or moral systems
are about values. Religions contain such parts. I.e., all major religions
I know have a moral component, but religions don't have a monopoly on this.
Many philosophical systems contain a moral system, including many atheistic
ones, such as Becker's Neostoicism (see his _A New Stoicism_), Rand's
Objectivism, and neoAristotoleanism (of Eric Mack, Doulgas Den Uyl, Douglas
Rasmussen) among many others.

I actually think "religion" in this debate is being used to smear anyone who
argues in favor of a free market. Now, I've actually presented arguments
and evidence of why a free market works in various cases Mariam English and
others have given us as examples of free market failure. Instead of
actually answering me on this, Mariam has just piled up more examples. In
other words, she can't reply to my specific arguments, so she moves on to
other ones.

To me this sounds a lot like when I debate with Creationists. They will
tell me evolution is disproven by some case A. When I show them that they
are wrong about A, they ignore this and bring up case B. When I show them
that they are wrong about B, they ignore this and bring up case C. And so
on. I think you get where I'm going.

Cheers!

Daniel Ust
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
    See "The Many Births of Free Verse" at:
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/FreeVers.html



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