Choices always gets me excited. This woman is so retarded, “capitalism is bad because it provides choices, which enslaves you.” Anachronism ftw!
After that RSA video, I decided to unsubscribe to them because it was getting absolutely insane. Yes, you can take things completely out of context and make a point based on that but that doesn’t add to our understanding of the world
Choice is stressful and anxiety producing if you’ve not been given a true choice once in your life, I don’t really doubt that, even if if does come with some amount of liberating feeling. The idea that choice in and of itself is inherently bad though is insane.
I haven’t watched the How the World Works critique. I’ll do that now.
They’re dealing with a psychological problem. Schwartz explains it fairly well, actually, though he manages to project it onto everyone else instead of seeing that it’s primarily in his own head, which is generally what seperates sensible psychological observations from overly ambitious sociological ones… If you have a choice, there’s a chance you might be liable for the consequences of your own actions. If there’s no choice - ever - then you can never be at fault for anything.
Consider how terrible their self-attack must be, and how defenceless they are against it, if they think they should eliminate the possibility of its occurance at any cost. Eliminate choice, so you never have to feel responsible for anything. Very sad.
He’s trying to trash Capitalism?
So, i coulda fucked this hot blonde, but instead i fucked this super hot red head. Now i have crabs. Therefore, society should arrange marriages so that people with STDs only get matched with others with STDs. We shouldn’t have choice because it leads to negative results.
Does anyone want to pay me to pace around and talk about this? I really wish you didn’t have a choice.
A full-blown assault on reason.
Probably just best to get rid of the word “choice” and call it an aesthetical red herring. Just say there is only stuff beings do (and not some mystical wholeistic Cartesian “I” being either) that is determined by the facts that led up to the event, and we are only interested in - and can only discuss with any meaning the kalediscopic subjective world of the market process - which is a simple fact of being and the world.
Besides all that, psychologizing the opponent is the last refuge of a scoundral. I think this may show just how impoverished true believer super oddball lefties are. All that is left of them seems to be a diminishing number of 2nd rate college students and some old academic holdouts. Kind of funny to watch the last groans and gibberish of used up relics before they go extinct.
“The more choices, the less satisfied we are”
This sort of makes sense. The more choices, the higher the opportunity cost, though I imagine that is vasly offset by the increase in satisfaction from increased quality.
Leftists define liberty to mean freedom from responsibility. Therefore, choices enslave you. Freedom means slavery and slavery means freedom. Did anyone yell Orwell?
Exactly. But that’s a caveman irrationality. Humans evolved to minimize opportunity cost. In other words, we are unhappy if we have to forgo good options, not if we have bad options. And the more opportunities we have, the more good options we necessarily have to forgo. If we have no choice in the first place then we aren’t unhappy, even if that means we are worse off. (If you have the choice between a good car or a good house then you have to forgo one of them. If you just get a crappy house and car you don’t have to forgo either.) That means people long for a state in which there are no choices. Along comes the state and tells them it can liberate them from their responsibilities… Socialists don’t care about the poor, that’s an excuse, they care about their own freedom from responsibility.
What? Exactly who’s side are you on?
John James:
What? Exactly who’s side are you on?
EmperorNero is on the side of EmperorNero. Be more explicit with the question you really want answered by EmperorNero.
Leftists define liberty to mean freedom from responsibility. Therefore, choices enslave you. Freedom means slavery and slavery means freedom. Did anyone yell Orwell?
The goal is to control other people (e.g. spend other people’s money). The pieces in the OP are meant to persuade other people to accept being controlled.
I’m on your side John, don’t worry. I just explained how (I think) it works. Most people don’t want freedom. They like the word, but they really want freedom from choices. Accepting that there is a evolutionary bias against freedom doesn’t mean I’m against freedom.
Yes, the expropriatory class exploits this, but a bias in human nature exists. Most people want freedom from choices. Those who want power and (other peoples) money can present themselves as liberators from choices. Of course they come up with arguments to sell such servitude.
Most people don’t want freedom.
In a prison in the physical world (not metaphorically speaking), how many people begged to enter it versus how many people were brought in by threat of force?
Choice is also stressful and anxiety-producing if one doesn’t understand, in any way that’s meaningful to him, the difference(s) between the choices.
I’m not worried, what you said just made no sense. I have no care if you want to be wrong. That’s you’re choice. Trust me I’m not worried about it in the slightest. It was just that someone voiced agreement with the idiotic premise of “choice=bad”, and you go “yeah but that’s nonsense…” and then proceed to say a bunch of stuff that sounds like you are actually in agreement with him…except for the fact that you just called it “a caveman’s rationality.”
Apparently you were trying to just outline the caveman rationale, but generally when someone says something is nonsense they follow it up with an explanation of why (including a demonstration of the way it really is in actuality.) It seemed like you were doing that, only your explanation of reality was exactly the same as the premise you were calling nonsense. Hence, “who’s side are you on?”
^This. Give/promise/guarantee a guy some beer, food, a woman, and a bed, and you got yourself a soldier/slave for life. For 90% of humans, values/needs are actually objective and easily discernible, just like with sheep (fence, food, water). The predominant genes in today’s humans are the ones of plundering automatons following a flag. Without them there’d be no states and armies in mankind’s history.
Practicing freedom – waking up every morning and not expecting something from someone above (god, state, master, commander, etc.) but taking responsibility for one’s own wellbeing and satisfaction – is extremely hard for the average human. Unfortunately.
^This. Give/promise/guarantee a guy some beer, food, a woman, and a bed, and you got yourself a soldier/slave for life. For 90% of humans, values/needs are actually objective and easily discernible, just like with sheep (fence, food, water).
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nobody wants freedom, it’s a cognitively empty word…power maybe (such as owning the real stuff you mentioned), but not freedom, as it is a gibberish word.
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If what you say is true, than Austrian econ is wrong and pointless. You could almost do a split taxonomy of humans within economic categorization the way you phrased your statement., which renders everything moot.
Even if you deny that austrian econ is wrong, and you are speaking of things only politically - than your politics are worthless and it is best to reframe things into a worthwhile relevant sociological way and not a quioxtic stance for some “inner circle”.
Worthwhile to whom? The way I frame things seems definitely worthwhile to me. My hope is that the exponential growth in communications and inter-connectedness would facilitate education and that the sheeple – who still must have enough brains/reason left in them not to stab forks into their eyeballs at dinner – would learn that individualism and freedom may not be nearly as bad as it was told by their masters.
I’d by interested to hear your alternative? Seek better shepherds/masters with the promise of wider paddocks, fresher water, and more food?
The problem with your assessment is that it doesn’t factor in pride. Yes you can manipulate people with somewhat relative ease with material things like that, but you’re forgetting the most important component…they have to believe they aren’t slaves. They have to be convinced that they do have free choice…that they are choosing to do the things they do. So in a way, people do want freedom…or at least the illusion of it. That’s what The Matrix was all about. This is what doublespeak and newspeak was all about. This is why vive’s point is valid in that people do have an innate sense and want for some hint of freedom on some level, and everyone’s different in that regard. That is why you can’t centrally plan an economy.