Is that an emotional feeling you have on that issue or do you actually have a citation to support that statement? Just curious.

Is that an emotional feeling you have on that issue or do you actually have a citation to support that statement?:3_eyes:

Patriot Act

Do I have to say anything else? They want peace through control.

The proof is in the pudding?

How has your life personally changed and how have they personally controlled you through enactment of the Patriot Act since it was inacted?

It's called the Patriot Act... Patriot = GOOD.

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It doesn't matter, it was an act of control.

We have many acts of control in society. Many, to numerous to count.

Pierce, are you trying to tell me you think communist countries prosper?

Because that's quite the wrong answer. Communist countries are all about organizing the scarcity, not creating the wealth.

Communist countries do not prosper.

I ask this from a deliberate perspective of naiveté, but are there not a finite amount of resources?

Not so much to provoke a lesson in why system A is better/worse than system B, but . . . what is "wealth" anyway?

If there is a finite amount of stuff you can possess, is "wealth" how much more you have than others? Or is it the power to take what you want?

If you simply begin with the first question of what is wealth? you will have to address the subsequent answers within the context of different societies. i.e. wealth in the Sudan is different from wealth in the US is different from wealth in Bolivia. I do believe that you are on to something, in some countries wealth is not always material.

On the present planetary scale, Flint, I'm not sure there is a finite limit. Maybe on a solar-system-wide scale there is, but the matter is not yet tested.

Wealth does not yet appear to be a zero-sum game, so far as I can see. The Club of Rome tried modeling the future of Earth's global economy that way, and nothing they predicted panned out. They thought India would be a starved-out desert by now, et cetera. They seemed not to have reckoned with innovation, admittedly an imponderable.

Well, it is zero for some.

Bad pun! Bad! :p

(Bend over, bend over, space-eh people-eh!)

It's not a zero-sum game because the output of workers converts things that are not valuable into things that are valuable.

The major component of the $300 Intel multi-core microprocessor is less than a penny's worth of sand.

Before internal combustion, all the oil in the M.E. was worthless.

Before the industrial revolution, 50% of the population had to do hard farm labor in order to feed the rest.

Capitalism works better because it maximizes human energy into producing wealth in this way. If something is considered valuable, resources are automatically put into generating it, without anyone's plan or program or signature.

i could never be 100% down with the views of any one group.