Good Lesson in Money

Thank you.
So stop advocating taking even more of my money. You want to give away your money, fine, that's your business.
 
I'm not advocating taking your money. I'm advocating taking the money of those who would wipe their bum with it because they have so much. There's no need for an entire room of shower heads that has mirrors on all sides (ceiling and floor too) to clean yourself.


That's Shaq's bathroom, BTW.


It pisses me off that these celebrities would rather spend 15 million on a house than give a little more back to the government. Without the government, there wouldn't even BE the chance to buy a 15 million dollar house.
 
It's their money.
It's all relative. To many people in the world, you count as such people who are so wealthy you could wipe your butt with money.
 
I have to agree with 13th here. You will never have a perfectly equal world, and if you somehow did everyone would be miserable. Apparently the Earth can only support one billion people at the standard of living we Americans are accustomed to. If I were rich I wouldn't be so quick to donate or give it away.
 
I know it won't happen... But call me crazy, I keep hoping for the best. This takes me back to the VERY FIRST PAGE of this thread... Fundamentally different outlooks on life. Optimism vs. Pessimism. I'm an optimist, I will hope for the best. Pessimists will try and use harsh reality checks to bring optimists down, but it ain't happenin' here.
 
You have no idea how dangerous blind optimism is. Basically that's what your optimism is. No, you're not crazy, you're just blind and a few other things. "Crazy" is often used as an excuse by people who know they're wrong but need a reason to be wrong and yet feel alright about themselves. After all, you can't really accuse a guy who is really "crazy" or "messed up" of anything.
Blind optimism got soldiers tied down in a confusing and unending conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Blind optimism is responsible for the financial melt down.
Blind optimism sent millions of troops "over the top" to get slaughtered by artillery and machine guns in World War I.
Blind optimism is the cause of countless structural failures of bridges, buildings etc.
Do you even know what real optimism is? It's the acknowledgement that things can get far worse. It's the realization that currently things aren't at a state where the only place to go is up. The understanding that our current situation is not as bad on the "good-bad" meter scale as we'd like to think.
Sure, overboard pessimsim leads to nowhere either, but in the real world usually pessimism ensures that security systems are redundant, elevators are designed to withstand three or four times the weight capacity as actually stated, etc.
Optimism is intellectual laziness at work.

Remember when the Germans voted in Hitler? For a while, they became optimists. They felt that their situation probably couldn't get any worse so they threw their chips in with Hitler and believed that he could bring them to glory unseen before.
Same goes with people in Communist countries. They often supported the Communists because for a while, the people became optimists and believed that there was very little room to go down and that these Communists could bring about miracles.

The pessimist will prepare for situations, first the ones likely to happen, then the ones not so likely but still possible. He'll also know that regardless of the countermeasures, bad things can still happen, so he'll be ready to tackle actual emergency situations as well. The optimist will close the book and go home, just to see his responsibility on the 9 O'clock news.

Pessimists who use pessimism to keep their drive to move forward in check (but not so much as to stifle any movement at all) are known as realists. Optimists hate realists because it means they have to do more work.
 
You have no idea how dangerous blind optimism is. Basically that's what your optimism is. No, you're not crazy, you're just blind and a few other things. "Crazy" is often used as an excuse by people who know they're wrong but need a reason to be wrong and yet feel alright about themselves. After all, you can't really accuse a guy who is really "crazy" or "messed up" of anything.
Blind optimism got soldiers tied down in a confusing and unending conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Blind optimism is responsible for the financial melt down.
Blind optimism sent millions of troops "over the top" to get slaughtered by artillery and machine guns in World War I.
Blind optimism is the cause of countless structural failures of bridges, buildings etc.
Do you even know what real optimism is? It's the acknowledgement that things can get far worse. It's the realization that currently things aren't at a state where the only place to go is up. The understanding that our current situation is not as bad on the "good-bad" meter scale as we'd like to think.
Sure, overboard pessimsim leads to nowhere either, but in the real world usually pessimism ensures that security systems are redundant, elevators are designed to withstand three or four times the weight capacity as actually stated, etc.
Optimism is intellectual laziness at work.
What's that supposed to mean?


I'm not a blind optimist. Surely you realize that from my experience on here with you. No, I'm just an optimist. A man hopeful that one day humanity will "see the light" and begin the process of co-existing. Hopeful that maybe some day, a man will see another man in distress and instead of driving by while staring, will stop, get out of the car, and help. Today's world sucks. It truly does... But it can get worse, and it's GETTING worse. We're on a slippery slope in this day and age. Even though it can get worse, though, it can also get BETTER. The world could be a peaceful place to live in and live with others. I have an absolute Utopian view of how society should be. In a perfect world, everyone would get along with everyone... People would be able to accept other people regardless of personal choices, there wouldn't be a need for crime, because everyone shares (almost) everything. Think of it as the old time South that you read about in novels... The South where you could just walk in someone's front door and shout "Howdy neighbor" and have a nice chat with someone... The South where if someone was going through any kind of hardships, the whole community would help them through it. The South where people got along with everyone.
Remember when the Germans voted in Hitler? For a while, they became optimists. They felt that their situation probably couldn't get any worse so they threw their chips in with Hitler and believed that he could bring them to glory unseen before.
Same goes with people in Communist countries. They often supported the Communists because for a while, the people became optimists and believed that there was very little room to go down and that these Communists could bring about miracles.

The pessimist will prepare for situations, first the ones likely to happen, then the ones not so likely but still possible. He'll also know that regardless of the countermeasures, bad things can still happen, so he'll be ready to tackle actual emergency situations as well. The optimist will close the book and go home, just to see his responsibility on the 9 O'clock news.

Pessimists who use pessimism to keep their drive to move forward in check (but not so much as to stifle any movement at all) are known as realists. Optimists hate realists because it means they have to do more work.
But the fundamental difference between then and now is exactly that... In the years that have passed since Nazi Germany, people have learned (to an extent) that we cannot give one person too much power.

But see, regardless of how you use your pessimism, it will still be pessimism. It will still be a negative view of the world. And instead of desiring change and advocating progress, the pessimist will simply lock his doors and shut out the world and "prepare" for what he thinks will happen. Instead of trying to do something about what might happen, he just prepares for it.
 
Your utopia may yet be possible. Probably after a world war or massive epidemic. There are almost 7 billion of us now. There simply isn't enough to just share any more; if we want to maintain our standard of living we're going to have to take within our lifetimes. And just because I predict hardship doesn't make me a pessimist. A positive mental attitude can make the hardest times in your life much easier to bear. I think the best approach is to hope for the best and expect the worst.
 
Rob, people do get out of their cars to help already. Some do, some don't, but usually people do help.
Your "utopian" world is what the Communists dreamed of. Almost to the letter actually. And just look at how that turned out. You say people have learned from their past mistakes? I think you have not. You're still trying to sell the same crap that killed enough people to make Hitler's stuff look like child's play.
Rob, you are a Communist. It doesn't matter what you say now because you've pretty much confirmed it. This is not called optimism at all in fact, it's called stupidity.
 
Rob, people do get out of their cars to help already. Some do, some don't, but usually people do help.
Your "utopian" world is what the Communists dreamed of. Almost to the letter actually. And just look at how that turned out. You say people have learned from their past mistakes? I think you have not. You're still trying to sell the same crap that killed enough people to make Hitler's stuff look like child's play.
Rob, you are a Communist. It doesn't matter what you say now because you've pretty much confirmed it. This is not called optimism at all in fact, it's called stupidity.

A friend of mine's car ran out of gas earlier this year, it was about mid-February. We sat on the side of the road for 4 hours because his mechanic is in Birmingham, half an hour away... Wanna know how many people stopped on the side of I-65? NONE. Some do, some don't, but normally, people rubberneck and keep on truckin'.

Absolutely. I am a Communist IN THEORY. I love the IDEA of Communism. I realize that it won't ever happen, because there will always be people who would take the ideas of Communism and twist them to their own personal gains. Nazi Germany wasn't Communism... China isn't REAL Communism... Soviet Russia wasn't REAL Communism. They were all twisted forms of Communism that were actually closer to monarchies... Two classes, the rich and the poor.

You know what I'd like, redneck? For you to imagine for a moment. Stop shouting your doomsday long enough to think about this.


Imagine a world where there was no war. There was no need for fighting. A world where everyone got along, the bad guys lost, and everyone lives happily ever after. A world where neighbors gather for a block BBQ; a world where strangers help each other with the groceries. Imagine a place where there was no crime, because there isn't a need for it. A world where you don't have to steal that food to feed your family, because food is provided. Sure, you don't have the biggest house on the block, but no one else does either. No one is better than anyone else, and no one is above anything. Total harmony.


Is that a bad image? I'm not asking for what's happened in the past, I'm asking you whether or not that sounds like a bad place to live in.



It's stupid of me to want to live like that? Pure Communism isn't a bad thing, redneck. It's the power-hungry people of the world that make it that way. Don't knock the idea because humans screw it up...

Bottom line, I know Communism will never work... There are too many people and too many independent thoughts to successfully achieve a pure Communist society. But I CAN hope for it. It's your right to call me stupid for my opinions, but it's my right to tell you to buzz off.
 
What doomsday theory?
I'd say the world is this way but it does go on one way or another.

You realize that to achieve your goals, it would mean that the individual will must be completely sacrificed, your meals provided to you by some kind of authority, every belief you have memorized and unquestioned. And in the end, someone has to actually maintain that organization that coordinates these efforts. The ribs for the BBQ didn't fall out of the sky. Someone had to grow that thing, kill the cow, cut it up into pieces, freeze it, transport it over many miles (all cold) and then have it stocked at a local market.
You must live in the same kind of house.
Have the same sort of job (since even if you get paid the same, you'd get things like "how come he's a doctor and I'm a janitor??")
Have no parents - since every parent has a different level of skill, it would give those with more competent parents an unfair advantage. Also, parents may have a different view of how the world should be run and therefore it is imperative that children be raised by the state authorities at the earliest possible age.
Have the number of children be assigned through lottery - since parents can't see their children who'd want to go through the pain of having kids only to lose them immediately? So a lottery must be put in place where mating couples are assigned how many children they must produce.
Have no marriages - since some people have a happy marriage and others do not, this is unfair and can lead to jealousy and conflict. Therefore the authorities should assign random people to pro-create.
Your mating couple will have to be from time to time the same gender as you. Discrimination against homosexuality? Never! Not if everyone parttakes in it.

If you look at it, all Communists were faced with these exact problems and found out they needed to be addressed one way or another. No Henderson, it's not that they were not "true Communists," they were Communists who took the words out of the book and put it into the real world only to realize what it required. By then they had already gone too far to go back and ended up making death camps as that is the only way to really curtail individual will.
Cambodia is a good example of a case where they took it all the way.

Same housing : Yes, if you all live in thatched huts in groups, your housing is about the same.
Same job: Being peasants. The surefire way to create what you need to survive (food) and have a job. Also, anyone can learn to do it in quick time.
No parents: Don't think they were able to get rid of marriages although they just didn't honor them much. But children were taken from their parents and were educated to go against their parents. Actually this was the case in North Korea as well. Although they didn't separate them from their parents, children were encouraged to spy on their parents and this led to a lot of arrests and executions.

If you are going to wish for or think of something, you better think it through pretty well. If you're a Communist at heart like you state, you better know everything that Communism is. Not only what it states it is, but why it is that almost every group that adopted Communism as their official state ideology and political system ended up the way they did.

Actually you remind me a lot about this one guy I knew in college who said something about water needing to be free. You can read about it here.
Though I have a feeling I'm wasting my time a bit here with this thread because obviously thinking is far beyond your capability.

I happen to live in a society where a large degree of sameness is required/expected. It's nothing like you think it is.
 
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Communist c*cksucker dude who is incapable of thinking?

"I sold my soul to the devil, and the price was cheap."

I'm not surprised.





You have fun redneck. I'm done with this.
 
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I'm wrong to wish for a future without war, without crime, without poverty? Well, I think it's YOU who is wrong to expect so little of humanity. It doesn't matter. If you're going to call me things like that, I have nothing more to say to you, because it would just be a bunch of asterisks anyway.
 
Actually that wasn't really the point of the reference, but I guess you've got to be one if you say you are. I said you reminded me of that guy. Didn't say you were that guy. People fall for this sort of stuff far too easily.

To wish for a future without war, without crime, without poverty is wrong. I've made it pretty clear. I'm not wrong to think so lowly of humanity. At the best of times we are appalling and at the worst of times we're even worse.
 
To say you remind me of the guy, and you label the guy something, means I too share that label at least to an extent.

See? Two fundamentally different views. Your view of the world is dark, damp and depressing. My view of the world is similar, but where there are ways to improve. You're content with being miserable, where I want to do something about it.

You saying I'm wrong is simply your opinion. Don't use definite articles, it's not correct in a debate like this. You can "think" all you want to that I'm wrong, but don't say I am. Because you're incorrect. You don't know whether I'm right or wrong. You only think I am.


This IS my last post.
 
No, you're wrong. History has proven it time and time again. You can't look deep enough to see what I mean and you don't want to look because it'll shatter your fantasy.
No, I'm not miserable. I'm doing pretty good.
 
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