Ron Allen wrote:
> Michael Price wrote:
> > Of course subsistence communities generally
> > can't consistently provide even the absurd
> > minimum you describe.
>
> Ron Allen wrote:
> > If a subsistence economy cannot consistently
> > provide the minimal needs of human beings, then
> > it is not a subsistence economy.
>
>
> Michael Price wrote:
> > Yes it is, Ron, learn some bloody history, or
> > economics or something before you open your big
> > yap.
>
>
> Ron Allen wrote:
> > I make every effort to learn both history and
> > economics.
>
>
> Michael Price wrote:
> > No, Ron, you don't. If you did you'd know that
> > mild malnutrition is _normal_ in subsistance
> > economies.
>
> Ron Allen wrote:
> > If I am still in error, then I am nevertheless
> > entitled to freely express what I believe to be
> > true.
>
> Ron Allen adds:
> Malnutrition seems to be widespread among the poor
> in our modern industrial capitalist economies.
Really? Because I haven't seen anyone starving who
doesn't have a drug problem, and they're starving because
of anti-capitalist restrictions not capitalist ones. The poor
in the west are CLEARLY not suffering from lack of food
and in fact they are generally overweight.
> If there is malnutrition in a subsistence economy, it
> is because of a scarcity of natural edibles in the
> natural environment of a subsistence economy, but,
> it is not because of a subsistence economy.
Then why is it that in the same natural enviroment there isn't
starvation in a capitalist society? Why is it the subsistance
economies have starvation and capitalist economies in the
same type of enviroment don't?
>
> There malnutrition existed in some, many, or most
> primitive subsistence economies does not mean that
> malnutrition must necessarily always exist in any
> and every subsistence economy. What you will
> blame of a subsistence economy, I would blame on
> either natural scarcity or natural unavailability.
But subsistance economies have starvation in areas
with incredibly high productivity like Vietnam, China
etc. To blame the weather simply doesn't make sense.
> Even in an industrial capitalist economy, there is
> malnutrition. Even in the United States, there is
> malnutrition.
>
You keep saying that but it's clearly not true. Even
someone on minimum wage can pay taxes and still
feed themselves quite well. If there were no minimum
wage they could probably feed themselves better.
>
>
> Michael Price wrote:
> > Yes, but not free to avoid the consequences of
> > that expression, namely that people realise that
> > you talk of things you don't know.
>
> Ron Allen answers:
> We all talk of things that we do not know.
>
But we don't all claim to know them. If you can't show
evidence for your claims then stop making them.
>
> Ron Allen wrote:
> > From what I have studied and learned, poverty
> > and subsistence are not the same condition.
>
> Michael Price wrote:
> > Poverty, but the standards of people in
> > capitalist countries, is normal in subsistence
> > economies. Even someone so ignorant of
> > economics that they get all their information
> > from Marx should know that.
>
> Ron Allen answers:
> I do not believe it to be true that poverty and
> subsistence are equivalent.
Didn't say they were.
> Poverty is not the
> creation of subsistence; it is the creation of
> abundance. When there is abundance, poverty is
> made real and actual.
So if nobody is rich there is no poverty? Well what
do you call getting insufficent food and only primitive
medicine while living in a crowded one room shack?
> We see poverty only when
> we see the co-existence of abundance with poverty.
> This is why poverty is considered a relative
> thing, and not an absolute thing. You seem to be
> assuming or asserting that poverty is an absolute
> thing in a subsistence economy.
Well that's not what most people think poverty is and
so you seem to be speaking a non-English language
again. But let's say your right and "poverty" is a relative
thing, why is it bad? If poverty doesn't mean that you
don't get things I want but that you get less of them than
others why should I care?
>
> There is truth in Ralph Waldo Emerson's words:
> "Poverty consists in feeling poor."
Spoken like a man who never went to bed hungry. The
boy who thinks himself poor because he didn't get a playstation
is not poor in the same way the one who thinks so because
he didn't get bread.
> In primitive
> subsistence economies, I suppose that the people
> did not feel poor. Even if there was widespread
> malnutrition in savage subsistence economies, the
> primitive peoples in these subsistence economies
> very likely did not see themselves as poor.
>
So you're OK with malnutrition as long as
> Clement I (Clement of Rome) declared that "we can
> call only the want of what is necessary poverty".
We can call whatever we want poverty. If we call only
the want of what is necessary poverty then the rate of
poverty in capitalist countries is basically the rate of
expensive fatal diseases combined with lack of insurance.
This is not that great.
> If a subsistence economy provides its members with
> what is necessary, then we cannot call the
> condition of its members poverty.
Of course we can. If you saw someone on the street with
the same standard of living as people in a subsistance
economy you'd call him poor.
> If the natural
> environment of a primitive community does not make
> every nutritional foodstuff available, then the
> malnutrition is not because of a subsistence
> economy, but solely because of a natural scarcity
> of some foods in some geographical regions.
>
Bull****. If a capitalist economy was in the same area
there would be plenty of every type of foodstuff.
> Henry George called poverty "the open-mouthed,
> relentless hell which yawns beneath civilized
> society." And when he used the word "civilized
> society", Henry George was talking about modern
> capitalist society.
Yes because in other societies the mouth is above
not beneath.
> When William James wrote
> that poverty is "the worst moral disease from
> which our civilization suffers", he was talking
> about our modern bourgeois civilization, and
> not about a primitive subsistence economy.
>
So he thought it OK that people in subsistence
economies starved?
> Lyndon Baines Johnson saw poverty as "our failure
> to give our fellow citizens a fair chance to
> develop their own capacities."
And why should we trust him? You seem amazingly
ready to trust the State and the Statists.
> This failure did not happen in primitive subsistence economies;
So everyone who could become a rich, productive, highly-skilled
person in a primitive subsistence economy did? I doubt that somewhat.
You didn't see too many hunter gatherers graduating from business
school and going on to create a company like Google or Fedex.
> but, it can and does happen in our modern
> capitalist economies.
>
> In other words, one of the blessings of modern
> civilization, of modern capitalism is the real
> poverty which co-exists with so much real
> prosperity. This blessing, this poverty is one of
> the many contradictions which capitalism is so
> ripe with.
>
You can only call it poverty because it's not as good
as what others in capitalism enjoy. If you compare
it to what those in subsistence economies have it's
riches.
>
> Ron Allen wrote:
> > And, in fact, in these United States, today,
> > mild and severe malnutrition are everyday
> > realities.
>
> Michael Price wrote:
> > Even if that's true (and I doubt severe
> > malnutrition is anything but extremely rare)
> > it's not from lack of money.
>
> Ron Allen answers:
> It is often because of a lack of money; but, it is
> also often because of a lack of knowledge.
>
Well then post a cite. You have lied before why
should I believe you?
>
> Michael Price wrote:
> > Even those whose income is substantially below
> > welfare rates can afford fruit and even meat.
> > Malnutrition in america is due to bad choices
> > not lack of means.
>
> Ron Allen answers:
> As I see it, malnutrition is because of both
> poverty and ignorance.
>
Well considering the millions spent on educating people
about nutrition I don't think you can blame capitalism for
such ignorance. You can lead a horse to water but
you can't make him think.
> Finally, let us remember the wise words of
> Epicurus, an ancient/classical Greek philosopher:
> "Contented poverty is an honorable estate."
Then why are you *****ing about poverty? If it's so honourable
why don't you try it?
> What
> does Epicurus mean by poverty in this saying? We
> can learn Epicurus's meaning when we study the
> writings of other ancient philosophers. The
> Macedonian statesman, Antipater, wrote: "Poverty
> does not mean the possession of little, but the
> non-possession of much."
Then we are all poor.
> Lucius Annaeus Seneca,
> a Roman philosopher, wrote: "It is not the man
> who has too little, but the man who craves more,
> that is poor." Quintus Horatius Flaccus, a Roman
> poet, wrote: "He is not poor who has enough for
> his needs." Publius Ovidius Naso, another Roman
> poet, wrote: "Plenty has made me poor."
>
> Enough!
>
> Ron Allen quotes:
> > "Fools ask for evidence; wise men never oblige."
> > -- Anonymous
>
>
> Michael Price wrote:
> > **** you're an idiot if you believe that.
>
>
> Ron Allen answers:
> I did not write it;
But you chose to repeat it when you could have posted anything.
> but, I believe that it does
> express an exceptional truth, a limited truth, an
> occasional validity.
No it doesn't. Fools don't ask for evidence, that's what makes
them fools. If evidence exists it's wise to get it, and therefore
wise to ask for it. If it does not exist then it's even wiser to ask
for it. Wise men provide evidence because that's the only way
they can recieve independent verification of their wisdom and
thus distinguish wisdom from self-satisfaction.
> If this makes me an idiot, then so be it.
>
>
> <><><><><><><>
>
> "People come to poverty in two ways: ac***ulating
> debts and paying them off."
> -- Jewish saying
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