The Myth That Success Is Unearned

originally posted by: Puppylove
a reply to: ketsuko

Working for something is only reasonable up until a point. See this is where the disconnect is what we need to find balance with. That's the problem, the weird delusion people have or should be allowed to have an infinite earning potential.

You're right up until a point, and we're wrong up until a point.

It's finding that balance which is where the magic happens.

But why should you be able to tell someone how many tomatoes they can grow?

It would be like telling an athlete, "In the interest of fairness, you can only ever run so fast or jump so high." It wouldn't be fair to your competitors if you we let you be too good at what you do.

What reason would anyone have to excel at anything if you tell them there is a cap?

a reply to: ketsuko

I added an edit to my previous post, but your why should anyone excel if there's a cap?

Name a competition where there isn't a cap? 1st prize always comes with a set amount, it's never infinite.

If I make 10 dollars for one job, and someone else makes 15 dollars for a different job. There's incentive to do what's necessary for the 15 dollar job. Raises exist as well. Why does there need to be an infinite cap? There aren't infinite resources on the planet.

When you need to do something and you only have so many resources to dole out for doing it, you dole out what's reasonable with the resources you have, why because you can't give away resources you don't.

You can be rewarded with a higher standard of living without being rewarded with infinitely higher standards of living at everyone else expense, screw the worlds resources or letting anyone else share in the pie, take until there's nothing left and you have it.

A limit is not bad it's necessary, same as work must be rewarded, resource must be dolled out fairly, and work must not be OVER rewarded at the expense of all.

No one deserves the whole pie.

a reply to: Puppylove

You are working off the idea that there is a single pie. There isn't.

You are taking my tomato analogy and saying that the village and saying the village can only every grow so many tomato plants in any one year. So it's not fair if the ones who let their tomatoes go to seed keep more seeds than some others and then grow more new plants the following year so that those who didn't let their plants go to seed are now locked out of having plants because the village can only grow a set number of plants.

You know as well as I do that tomatoes make more tomatoes. So even if some people keep more seeds to grow more plants in the following year, it's no bar to others having a few plants for themselves. Those extra seeds do not end "stealing" the seeds of others.

a reply to: ketsuko

Wealth is not the same as your tomatoes as it allows for one to control anything that may be purchased with wealth, including your tomatoes. Your tomato analogy is silly because wealth is not tomatoes, we aren't in a barter system anymore. Your tomatoes are in the same pool as your neighbors chickens, you uncles cows, and the car factory down the street. All tomatoes can go to hell if the people that control the wealth decide they don't want to buy them. Can you survive on tomatoes alone? How will they survive when you no longer have the money to water them? Go get a factory job you bum.

The creation of cash turns the entire world into a single pie and lumps all resources into that pie, and you want to defend the idea that a select few can control all the cash wealth and thus all the worlds resources including your tomatoes.

I'm not saying people don't need incentives but at the same times there are extremes that are just as absurd as no no incentives and there is a balance.

All or nothing is a false dynamic.

To add more to your tomato analogy. Right now there are big people controlling and buying up the food industry. These same people are using that wealth to bribe people to create legislation to protect their control over the food industry. In many cases working to be able to control though over regulation who can or cannot grow tomatoes.

With the ability to infinitely gain in resources comes the ability to prevent others from doing the same and control more and more of the pie as more and more markets get cornered.

Basically you're encouraging slavery, because once all markets become controlled by a select few, they own all of us as we are at their mercy. Unless we unite against them.

I'm not promoting everyone getting the same, I'm protecting from people getting too much.

There's a middle ground, we need to COMPROMISE both extremes are doomed to failure, pain and suffering.

A legislator in Florida banned planting vegetables in yards saying they're ugly... not when they hit the plate though huh?

When any competition for a food source is legislated out by industry then where is freedom going to ring? It won't it will be wake up punch a clock go into work punch a clock work punch a clock leave go home decompress in a strict manner staring at a TV angry at the world no decompression punch the clock go to sleep and rinse repeat... that's like a bunch of drones working for a hive mind state where only industry gets to provide in exchange for every single last bit of your time no independence whatsoever.

a reply to: Puppylove

I use that analogy to illustrate basic economics. The tomatoes stand in for anything you can make, buy or sell.

Economics operate the same no matter the good or service. So boiling it down to tomatoes works well enough to illustrate the basic ideas.

a reply to: ketsuko

It's a bad analogy cause it in no way comes close to representing our modern economy.

Your tomato analogy is idealized capitalism and is no more realistic than idealized socialism.

That's the problem. To many capitalist buy into the capitalistic ideal even though it's long since been perverted while chastising socialist for their ideals likewise having been perverted, and socialists do the same.

We don't have a capitalistic system, so why are you defending it? We also don't have a socialistic system. We have a system that combines the worst aspects of capitalism and the worst aspects of socialism and uses them to benefit the few over the majority and further help them cement their control over us.

If you truly believe in capitalism you should be as opposed to cronyism as I am.

originally posted by: 8675309jenny

originally posted by: SprocketUK

When you allow small numbers of people to stash away billions...

Allow?

ALLOW?!?!?

Are you actually serious? Do you even hear yourself? Living in the nanny-state UK has so brainwashed you with the leftist agenda that you actually believe someONE or some entity has a RIGHT to control how successful a person can be... and how much money they are allowed to save or give to their family....

Freakin sickening.

probably don't even realize how depraved that communist idealogy is and how badly is breaks the human spirit to thrive and prosper. You should really read all about East Germany and the psychological effects of the DDR.

originally posted by: SprocketUK...stash away billions of dollars in trust funds and suchlike it means that there is less liquid money out there in the economy for everyone to chase.

And you just demonstrated that you have no clue how a trust fund works!

You are unqualified to comment in this thread and I'd go so far as unqualified to vote, seeing as you really don't understand the world or human nature.

wow, I am so glad you didn't freak out and go off the deep end there. well done.

originally posted by: ketsuko
You are working off the idea that there is a single pie. There isn't.

You are taking my tomato analogy and saying that the village and saying the village can only every grow so many tomato plants in any one year. So it's not fair if the ones who let their tomatoes go to seed keep more seeds than some others and then grow more new plants the following year so that those who didn't let their plants go to seed are now locked out of having plants because the village can only grow a set number of plants.

You know as well as I do that tomatoes make more tomatoes. So even if some people keep more seeds to grow more plants in the following year, it's no bar to others having a few plants for themselves. Those extra seeds do not end "stealing" the seeds of others.

I see where you're coming from, but it's not accurate. You're approaching the pie from the supply side of things. There truly is a potentially unlimited supply of anything. That's not what determines the size of the pie though, what determines that is demand.

In your tomato analogy there's a few levels of demand, and each time you drop one the tomatos are worth less and less: Even if you really like tomatos the first tomato you buy in any given year holds more utility than the 5 millionth tomato you buy. Eventually you're going to want a variety of food, you're going to max out on the number of seeds you can use, and so on. Even if you're fine with eating nothing but tomatoes if you can consume 10 per day you're limited to 3650 of them in a year, that 3651st holds much less value.

This is the issue. Each person only creates a finite amount of demand, and therefore a finite amount of money they're willing/able to spend on the goods and services of others.

As proof of this, I'll apply the concept to several fields beyond food:
Entertainment - You only have so many hours per day to entertain yourself, it hits a theoretical maximum at 24 hours worth of entertainment per day. Anything you do to entertain yourself past this threshold results in competition against what you're already doing, and some things will lose out.

Software - Software reproduction is literally free because digital copies of products are so easy to produce. Making 1 billion copies of a product is no harder than making 1 copy of a product. Time to use the software is the bottleneck because demand is finite, the supply is infinite.

ATS posts - Assuming others are anything at all like me, we only have a certain amount of time to spend reading/writing each day. At some point you have to pick and choose what you want to respond to or read about. ATS content is potentially infinite, but it can only fill a finite demand from each user.

This is where your analogy breaks down. Supply is easy to create, but demand determines potential revenues, and demand is finite.

a reply to: Aazadan

Scarcity is what fixes prices right along with legislation... it's basically a human centipede... what you cant brain wash into people time to legislate it onto others forcing their head up the systems ass.

originally posted by: BigBrotherDarkness
a reply to: Aazadan

Scarcity is what fixes prices right along with legislation... it's basically a human centipede... what you cant brain wash into people time to legislate it onto others forcing their head up the systems ass.

Supply and demand operates along a curve, a very rare item still won't sell for much if demand is low. This goes back to my point of demand being what's relevant. It's my argument that the potential supply of any given good is infinite, or at least very very high. What gives labor and products value is demand. Demand comes from others, not from yourself... therefore success comes from others, not from yourself.

a reply to: Aazadan

Well with that why charge money for any product.

a reply to: ketsuko

There is the old saying that you can Feed a Man to Fish and Feed him for a day
You can teach a man to fish and he can feed himself forever

The problem is that the most wealthy have bought the river and charge you to fish in it.
Especially when they have politicians in their pockets.

originally posted by: jacobe001
a reply to: ketsuko

There is the old saying that you can Feed a Man to Fish and Feed him for a day
You can teach a man to fish and he can feed himself forever

The problem is that the most wealthy have bought the river and charge you to fish in it.
Especially when they have politicians in their pockets.

We could always just alter the quote. "Feed a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a life time. Teach a man to fish and buy the river, enslave him for life and never fish again."

a reply to: Puppylove

Working isn't slavery. It can be very fulfilling. We all need to help one another, and we do that through our work.
Even the person who is fishing for the person who bought the river, is providing fish for others, even though he might be getting a smaller piece of the pie, he is still providing a needed service.

a reply to: angeldoll

So slavery isn't slavery then? A slave is bought, given shelter and fed, in exchange for doing the work demanded of him. So even though the man has no choice. It's just work, right? It's all a matter of perspective? The slave should be happy with his work?

We all need food and water to live. When simple food and water is all you get for your labor you are a slave, unless the only one you are feeding is yourself.

At no point in the above analogy was there any implication the person was being paid or given anything else but the basic essentials he needed to live, and while doing that, he was providing for someone else who's only action was to teach him to fish then use that to hold him as a slave for life by making his very livelihood dependent on feeding him a fish before he could have his own.

That's slavery.

The only way we will ever be free is when food and water become a given right. Once food, water and basic shelter are met, then earnings for work can start. One should not be forced to work or die. That's slavery. We should be trying to move beyond that.

a reply to: Puppylove

If that is truly your attitude, you will never be satisfied. It is the antithesis of how I look at things.

The only way we will ever be free is when food and water become a given right.

They never have been. Even hunter-gatherers had to work for what they had. I wish everyone did have free access to food and water, and actually some people do.

Good hard work benefits the body and the spirit. I fault people when they believe they are above it.

a reply to: angeldoll

Speaking of hunters and gatherers, ok there's another way we can be free, by being allowed to grow food, collect water, hunt and feed ourselves. Too bad that's being regulated into an impossibility. Thus slaves.