Would Adam Smith be a Republican or a Democrat today?

Cypress said:
Adam Smith was not using the term self-interest in the way you want to use it.

Conflating self-interest, benevolence, happiness, and self-fulfillment is probably a sophistry that later 19th and 20th century philosophers engaged in.

Adam Smith was talking about self-interest in a tangible economic sense. He felt that while benevolence was admirable, in the real world most people are motivated by self-interest. And I don't think he was talking about working at the marine animal rescue sanctuary.
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holy shit. the animal sanctuary was your example

you missed out on the key word of rational

Me donating time to take care of dogs is both rational, and in my self interest because I can afford it and it makes me feel good. Just like paying money to watch a sporting event, or any number of other activities to occupy time in a capitalistic society
 
Kafka said:
Don't point out Cypress's errors. It will make him angry. Only bad people question Cypress's statements.
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trollololol

keep me out of your dumb ass feud. your comment had zero to do with anything but your childish dispute from who knows what thread
 
zymurgy said:
trollololol

keep me out of your dumb ass feud. your comment had zero to do with anything but your childish dispute from who knows what thread
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I've actually provided quite a bit of actual valuable content to this thread. Sorry you missed all of it. Go back and look. thanks.
 
zymurgy said:
well this aint it.......trollolol
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Sorry you didn't understand my points about the topic. If you need some help I can explain them. Perhaps it was the bit about the Gilded Age and regulations on the free market? Did that throw you off?

I can help. Let me know.
 
Kafka said:
Sorry you didn't understand my points about the topic. If you need some help I can explain them. Perhaps it was the bit about the Gilded Age and regulations on the free market? Did that throw you off?

I can help. Let me know.
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most of your replies were to someone I have on ignore - and now you are just introducing childish feuds into the thread, which I would of also ignored, but you had to do so by reply to me for some dumb mouth breathing reason?
 
zymurgy said:
most of your replies were to someone I have on ignore - and now you are just introducing childish feuds into the thread, which I would of also ignored, but you had to reply to me for some dumb mouth breathing reason?
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I don't care if you are unable to read. My posts are there for the reading regardless of who they were in response to.

If you don't understand my points, like I said, I will be MORE than happy to explain them to you.
 
zymurgy said:
Me donating time to take care of dogs is both rational, and in my self interest because I can afford it and it makes me feel good.
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That's not how Adam Smith defined self-interest, and Yakuda was responding specifically to Adam Smith from the OP.

Sure, we can just lump all kinds of English words under 'self-interest", i.e. self-sacrifice, happiness, benevolence, fulfillment, enjoyment, etc. That kind of sophistry is going to reduce the English language to about 500 words, if we are just going to ignore the shades of meaning between words.

I don't think happiness or enjoyment are what people feel when the volunteer to provide humanitarian assistance in war zones. I don't think my Mother was 'happy' about volunteering to meet with inmates for Bible study in the State prison, I don't think she did it for her benefit at all. There are plenty of other things she could have done that would provide her more "happiness" or to obtain some vague notion of "feeling good".
 
Cypress said:
I don't think happiness or enjoyment are what people feel when the volunteer to provide humanitarian assistance in war zones.
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You are not going to like this but I disagree. While no one is having a "party" while providing humanitarian aid to people in war zones they are probably feeling good about doing the work.

Feeling good about doing work one loves is, technically speaking, self-interest and a form of "happiness".

Cypress said:
I don't think my Mother was happy about volunteering to meet with inmates for Bible study in the State prison, I don't think she did it for her benefit at all.
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Obviously you know your mom, but I would assume that doing the work of volunteering to help people actually made her feel good.
 
Cypress said:
^^ Trying to derail another one of my threads by reaching out to MAGAs and begging them to join you in complaining about me.
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Nope. Just doing what YOU do literally all the time when you get me banned from a thread and then go bitching to Doc Dutch about me.

Hypocrisy seems to be your biggest blind spot.

And of course I'm not derailing the thread since I've posted MANY posts directly relevant to the topic.

You don't focus on those because, well we all know why. ;)
 
Kafka said:
Nope. Just doing what YOU do literally all the time when you get me banned from a thread and then go bitching to Doc Dutch about me.

Hypocrisy seems to be your biggest blind spot.

And of course I'm not derailing the thread since I've posted MANY posts directly relevant to the topic.

You don't focus on those because, well we all know why. ;)
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Are you through derailing my thread and using it to indulge your festering grievances?
 
Yakuda said:
I'm not the one that mentioned anything about animal rescue bullshit. My position AGAIN is that EVERYONE is motivated by self interest ESPECIALLY when it comes to economics. This is why I really hate the pretending the left does that they only care about other people. Fucking hilarious
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Thanks for proving you aren't a Christian like most MAGAts claim.

I know you're a poorly educated dumbass, Yak, but there's a synergistic effect of having a healthy, educated workforce paying taxes rather than being a drain on society.

This is why I support increased federal support for schools in poor areas, encouraging businesses to expand into low income areas and pro-choice to allow women to join the workforce instead of staying home collecting welfare.
 
What Smith would NOT be is a Leftist, Progressive, or today's Democrat. Nothing in anything Smith wrote or did suggests that he would have supported or advocated for massive government in the marketplace through regulation and nit-picking laws or socialism.
 
Kafka said:
Free trade without oversight or controls leads to very bad things. Things no American actually wants. We know this because we lived through it in the late 19th century and we saw what free-market laissez faire capitalism can result in without oversight and controls.

Trust me: YOU would not be one of the robber barons. You'd be with the rest of us living in a crowded disease-infested tenement working 7 days a week 18 hours a day (as well as our children) and the food you bought at the store was just as likely to kill you as nourish you.

Americans stood 4-square against that and DEMANDED controls be put on the markets. WE DEMANDED IT.
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There's a difference between regulations that level the playing field in terms of fairness in the market, and heavy-handed regulation that controls it.
Kafka said:
We continued to demand it throughout the 20th century as we asked for worker safety to be included, consumer safety, hazardous waste management (the kind that didn't wind up with masses of children with strange brain cancers dying horribly).

All the "regulations" you Trumpists scream about all the time WERE PUT IN PLACE BECAUSE AMERICANS DEMANDED IT. WE DEMANDED IT.

YOU demanded it.

You know how I know? Let me ask you: do you think a chemical company should be able to poison your drinking water without any real guilt on their part? How many of your children would you allow to die from cancer before you thought regulations were a good thing?

If we can find out how many of your kids you are willing to watch writhing in agony as they die of cancer then maybe we can figure out what a good regulatory scheme is that works for you!
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Question: How safe is safe enough? How much pollution should we allow?

If your answer to both those questions is something like "Totally safe," "100% safe," and "zero," or "none," to pollution, then you are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
 
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