I am a distrubutist and i am proud of it - Catholic Distrubutism makes me proud of being Catholic!

[Rocinante]

What you might not know, but, must always remember, is that the noun, “charity,” means “love,” in the Catholic scheme of things. Charitable giving is an emergence from our love of God and neighbor. If it is done at gun-point, it is not, per se, “charity.” God, and Christ, want us to be charitable, on our own volition. Unfortunately, some people are not. But, government educed charity only exacerbates uncharitableness. So, it’s not the answer.

this doesn’t make any sense. it is like saying that posting security guards in department stores exacerbates the desire to steal. it is like saying that if the government prohibited abortion, it would frustrate women’s free will to demonstrate their virtue by usually not killing their babies.

our government is our own volition (part of it anyway) since democratic governments govern and tax only by consent of the governed.

what government handled charitable giving do you oppose? the aid to the victims of hurricane katrina? (most people think we didn’t do enough through our government soon enough or nearly well enough.) the aid we give to foreign countries following disastrous acts of god?

It is interesting that somehow people survived, ate pretty good, lived decently, and for the most part, got along just as well, if not better, before the 1930’s and the big government that saddled us with taxation to excess.

it would be interesting if that were at all true. but is it???

what evidence do you have that “people survived, ate pretty good, lived decently, and for the most part, got along just as well, if not better, before the 1930’s”? it sounds like you are just making that up.

 

[Betterave]

do police take away your free will to decide whether or not you want to kill someone? if not then free will is not the issue.

we have laws that coerce people to act morally who otherwise would not. it seems to me that catholics, who are called to charity by jesus and would give charitably anyway, would support laws that force non-catholics to act as charitably as catholics are just as catholics support laws to force others to abide by catholics ethics with regard to other matters such as abortion.

Interesting argument, but I’m sure we can all see that there is an important difference between a prohibition (of all forms of murder, destruction of innocent human life) and an enforcement of a positive duty (to nurture all innocent human lives), right? Prohibitions (“thou shalt not”) are absolute, whereas positive duties, while not entirely optional, can be fulfilled in better or worse ways. So the problem in the latter case is a how-problem (an economic as well as an ethical problem), upon which there can be legitimate disagreement, whereas in the case of murder it’s simply “thou shalt not” (a question simply of ethics).

 

[Warrenton]

our government is our own volition (part of it anyway) since democratic governments govern and tax only by consent of the governed.
.

This is hard to grasp: are you saying that people want to pay the amount of tax they pay? Are you saying that government would voluntarilly limit itself if the people asked it to?

The problem with government enforced charity is that in the absence of any shared understanding of charity, we will not agree on what is to be done with the money the government takes. For instance, the secretary of defense thinks it is charitable to take the tax money and give it to the veterans, while I say it is merely a device for him to perpetuate his war aims, which are not charitable. The secretary of HUD thinks its charity to spend four times the prevailing rate to renovate a crack house, and I think charity is re-roofing the church, which HUD won’t do because that would mingle the church and the state.

Your idea would work if we shared a common faith and agreed upon a “higher authority.” But since we don’t, it is preferable to leave people to their judgment in these matters. Obviously, if the goverment takes the people’s money through taxes, to that extent it limits their judgment.

And with Hurricane Katrina, there were unquestionably many problems with handling the storm and its aftermath, but government spending was not one of them.

 

[JDaniel]

this doesn’t make any sense. it is like saying that posting security guards in department stores exacerbates the desire to steal.

Not at all. And, it’s exactly how it works. Most people who have what it takes to earn decent sums of money, don’t much like the IRS, or tax collectors in general, at all. That is saying is as charitably as I can. So, if the tax collectors are going to “steal” what a person has worked very hard for - because they own the guns - that person is not going to feel very charitable. You’ll see what I mean, when you get to be an adult.

it is like saying that if the government prohibited abortion, it would frustrate women’s free will to demonstrate their virtue by usually not killing their babies.

Absurd.

our government is our own volition (part of it anyway) since democratic governments govern and tax only by consent of the governed.

Actually, we’re a Republic based loosely on democratic values. And, that is simply not true: a minority can, by trick or otherwise, occasionally gain power, in our Republic. When there, they can force, by juxtaposing fiats, taxation that the producers do not want. The majority of us, in this Republic, are not producers. They’re are called takers. Recipients.

There are about 300,000,000 people in the US. About half of us are under 18 years of age. Most, in this latter category, do not engage in full-time work, if they work at all. Of the remaining 150,000,000 people, about 45,000,000 do not work because they are retired, on SS, or some other kind of pension sort of assistance. Of the remaining 105,000,000, about 15%, or 15,750,000 are currently unemployed. That leaves us with 89,000,000 people potentially actively employed. Of those 89,000,000 people, about 40,000,000 don’t work in the private sector as they work for government, in one of its various forms, Government employees do not produce - they push paper around. So, what’s left. There are about 50,000,000 people, in these United States, that are potentially productive. Unfortunately, some percentage of them don’t actively produce stuff. They work for banks and investment firms. They make money by the movement of money purely. So, maybe 40,000,000 US citizens actually produce something that can be said to forward the economy. About 15% of us. Try to disprove this!

what government handled charitable giving do you oppose?

All of it. Most of the taxes obtained by them goes to pay for them and the bureaucracy that they have created and like to grow. Not much of it goes to the people it’s supposed to go to. This has been shown over and over, for many, many years. I would not oppose it as strenuously if the money extracted from us got to where it was supposed to go!

the aid to the victims of hurricane katrina? (most people think we didn’t do enough through our government soon enough or nearly well enough.)

It would be interesting to see how much money was exacted for Katrina relief and how much actually got to the poor victims.

the aid we give to foreign countries following disastrous acts of god?

If that’s what we gave aid to foreign countries for solely, that would not be a problem for me. But it’s not, and you know it.

what evidence do you have that “people survived, ate pretty good, lived decently, and for the most part, got along just as well, if not better, before the 1930’s”? it sounds like you are just making that up.

That is so widely known as to be a ridiculous request. Ask your parents. Go to the library. I’m not going to do your homework for you

God bless,
jd

 

[reggieM]

Government must respect the principle of subsidiarity: "a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to coordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good.”

All persons are obliged to develop the cardinal virtues, prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance in whatever situation they find themselves. Moral failures are not caused by the system; immorality resides in the human heart.
The primary role of government is to support families, in solidarity and the role of the Church, and that’s why we need laws to seek and punish those who steal, cheat, swindle, and worse crimes. That’s why we have the Catholic Church to guide us – She who invented charity in the West. Providing a family allowance based on family size for families with mothers who stay at home to care for the children enables more jobs breadwinners, counters birth dearth, and can strengthen families. The government should levy taxes on business and individuals for legitimate furtherance of the common good being wary of the deleterious effects on employment and families of excessive taxation.

This sounds very good and a lot like Distributist principles to me. So, we can call that method whatever we want – but it’s basically Catholic doctrine as applied to social and economic norms.

 

[Eccela]

Intersting to think on a Catholic site the failure to mention “…without love it is nothing” without quoting all of Corinthians, Paul is stating what Christ taught of giving, redistributing, and dying for someone all without love is as nothing, This is due to the our natures and how we are to give for the good of soul with thought and intentions for the receiver. The government and taking from who they can and giving to who they want doesn’t work and hasn’t ever worked. The Church doing the same has the same results. both damage the spirit and soul of receiver and donor. Having said this I do believe in the tithe and the faith behind the tithe, not because God needs the money (the portion given in envelopes) but because it is for my benefit. I say this having lost (had taken) both income and jobs the last three years due to bad people and bad government. Handling the situation as the best example to all (especially our children) who know what has happened to us I believe has been the point to much of the wrong done to us. Praying for those who have done such harm to us and doing so (with much prayer) with the knowledge that they are as loved by Our Lord as I am and in need of prayers.

 

[Abu]

reggieM
[Re post #137]. This sounds very good and a lot like Distributist principles to me. So, we can call that method whatever we want – but it’s basically Catholic doctrine as applied to social and economic norms.

Perhaps the fact of the development of the economic laws of free enterprise that owe so much to the Catholic Late Scholastics, and endorsed by John Paul II as a development in social teaching, is beginning to get through. Free enterprise, like everything else, works best when those who engage in it observe the natural moral law and the precepts of the Catholic Church. No other economic system has ever enabled such a creation and distribution of wealth as has occurred since its development.

Gregory Gronbacher points to “a central problem with many schools of Catholic thought, namely the inability to integrate both the logic of the market and the logic of morality….There are foundational market realities that cannot be ignored for any reason, including moral concerns, because, in so doing, further harm may result to both market mechanisms and morality.” As Etienne Gilson put it, “Piety is no substitute for technique.” [Quotes from Thomas E Woods Jr, *The Church And The Market, Lexington Books, 2005, p 9]

Pope John Paul II in Centesimus Annus, 1991, #42:
If by “capitalism” is meant an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector, then the answer is certainly in the affirmative, even though it would perhaps be more appropriate to speak of a “business economy”, “market economy” or simply “free economy”.

Distributism has never had wide-spread support. One of the reasons may be that “the market economy consists of voluntary property exchanges. There is no mechanism of ‘distribution’ whatsoever.” (Thomas E Woods, The Church And The Market, Lexington Books, 2005, p 161, 201). While Distributism is unworkable as a societal norm, especially as Catholic social teaching recognises the tremendous benefits of free enterprise, condemns socialism, and proposes no “third way”, anyone is free to practise it.

That is why Dr Woods’ book above is described as “A welcome antidote to the various combinations of economic incompetence and self-righteous posturing - ‘liberation theology,’ New Deal welfarism, social democratic interventionism, distributism - that too often masquerade as the only ‘authentic’ interpretations of Catholic social teaching.” (Edward Feser, Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Loyola Marymount University).

 

[Mystic_Banana]

And with Hurricane Katrina, there were unquestionably many problems with handling the storm and its aftermath, but government spending was not one of them.

They didn’t really bother, from what I can tell…

This really could end up being tit for tat on specific recent events.

So, just to reiterate a previous question, would all you who aggressively oppose tax for health care oppose tax for military purposes? Surely to support the latter and reject the former would be unChristian? These things are pretty much always for financial means anyway - anyone who thinks the Iraq war was anything else is only fooling themselves… how can you pay for that, then resent paying so that some poor sap can have proper medical care?

What’s wrong with you people?!? uch:

 

[reggieM]

Perhaps the fact of the development of the economic laws of free enterprise that owe so much to the Catholic Late Scholastics, and endorsed by John Paul II as a development in social teaching, is beginning to get through. .

Perhaps the Distributist principles which are a corrective to “unbridled capitalism” (which has been condemned by the Holy See – and condemed with “severity”) is beginning to get through.

Unbridled capitalism is an evil. That is, the purest form of Capitalism is condemned by the Church.

The modified form that you presented, which calls for government regulation of the market and government initiatives to protect the family from the evils inherent in unbridled Capitalism, is influenced by Distributist principles.

You haven’t yet acknowledged that capitalism, in its purest, unbridled form, is condemned as an evil by the Church, just as socialism is.

 

[Abu]

reggieM
capitalism, in its purest, unbridled form, is condemned as an evil by the Church, just as socialism is.

False. Where does the Church repeat such a ringing condemnation as below?
Pius XI declared emphatically in Quadragesimo Anno, 1931, #120: “If Socialism, like all errors, contains some truth (which, moreover, the Supreme Pontiffs have never denied), it is based nevertheless on a theory of human society peculiar to itself and irreconcilable with true Christianity. Religious socialism, Christian socialism, are contradictory terms; no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist.”

 

[Rocinante]

You’ll see what I mean, when you get to be an adult.

these sorts of insults don’t further your argument and don’t reflect well on you or your fellow catholics.

That is so widely known as to be a ridiculous request. Ask your parents. Go to the library. I’m not going to do your homework for you

you said that people were as well off if not better before the 1930’s. i asked for evidence for your strange claim, and the above is your response.

i thought it was a reasonable request, but you are asserting that it is “widely known” that people were better off before 1930. this seems to me to be an additional unfounded assertion and way off the mark.

i asked my parents (as you commanded) and everyone i know and it turns out that no one but you thinks that life was better before 1930, so it seems that my request was not ridiculous. rather your claim that life was better and your claim that this is a widely known fact are both ridiculous. no one but you thinks that, and as far as i can tell you have no evidence for your beliefs.

i guess i can count on your continued refusal to back up your strange assertions, so i won’t bother asking again.

 

[Rocinante]

Not at all. And, it’s exactly how it works. Most people who have what it takes to earn decent sums of money, don’t much like the IRS, or tax collectors in general, at all. That is saying is as charitably as I can. So, if the tax collectors are going to “steal” what a person has worked very hard for - because they own the guns - that person is not going to feel very charitable.

these people you talk about as those who “have what it takes to earn decent sums of money”–how exactly did they get “what it takes”? why don’t others have “what it takes”?

does “what it takes” include god given talents? what does catholicism say is the proper us of such talents? to help others or to help yourself to what you can swindle from others?

does “what it takes” include having parents who already have “decent sums of money”? it sure seems to.

or does “what is takes” just sort of arise in an vacuum like in the ayn rand sci-fi novels?

does “what it takes” include having other people willing and able to work for low wages so that those who have “what it takes” can make “decent sums of money” on their backs? it sure seems to.

does “what it takes” include a government that pays for security to protect such people’s “decent sums of money” and pays for the eduction of the workers on whose backs “decent sums of money” are accumulated? it sure seems to. who should then pay for the bulk of the expenses of running the government?

When there, they can force, by juxtaposing fiats, taxation that the producers do not want. The majority of us, in this Republic, are not producers. They’re are called takers. Recipients.

…maybe 40,000,000 US citizens actually produce something that can be said to forward the economy. About 15% of us. Try to disprove this!

these non-producing “takers” as you call them include teachers, doctors, priests, policemen, soldiers, as well as government officials. should all such people think of themselves as “recipients” of the benefits provided by the captains of industry? aren’t the captains of industry entirely dependent on a social system that includes such people? it seems to me that they owe a great debt to these “takers.”

 

[Abu]

JDaniel
Abu: Excellent post. (#137).

Thank you.

People herein have a loathing for banks, but, for all the wrong reasons. The real reason they should loath banks is that banks are part of that industry that do not actively produce goods or services. They earn their operating revenue principally by the movement of money, beginning with the earning of interest. When that is done, regular people are left out in the cold.

Actually, when people are saving more then increase of capital for lending increases and the lower interest rates enable businesses to develop more long term projects. Banks enable this process and a false resentment against this process is misplaced. The more people save or invest the more wealth can be created using those savings.

The trouble in the U.S.A. is that “the Federal Reserve is a complex bank. Although self-defeating, its primary function is simple to understand: Keep inflation and unemployment low. The Fed’s two main tools are the creation of money out of thin air to pump into the financial system and the withdrawal of money from the system. The subprime mortgage debacle, the stock market crashes of 2000 and 2008, the skyrocketing price of gold, the nation’s pension problems, and the low rates of interest senior citizens are earning on their money are all caused by the Fed injecting massive amounts of money into the economy.”
[online.worldmag.com/2010/11/01/controlling-the-fed/]](http://online.worldmag.com/2010/11/01/controlling-the-fed/])

This applies to all central banks which intervene to manipulate free enterprise.

 

[Abu]

reggieM
government regulation of the market and government initiatives to protect the family from the evils inherent in unbridled Capitalism, is influenced by Distributist principles.

The Pope here expresses the development of social teaching to emphasise the recognition of large associations in economic life, as well as identifying the State as committing an injustice and a grave evil by breaching subsidiarity. He emphasises cooperation in businesses and the value of high quality work.
St Escriva reveals that work is a prayer.

Pope PiusXI, Quadragesimo Anno, 1931:
79. As history abundantly proves, it is true that on account of changed conditions many things which were done by small associations in former times cannot be done now save by large associations. Still, that most weighty principle, which cannot be set aside or changed, remains fixed and unshaken in social philosophy: Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them.

1. The supreme authority of the State ought, therefore, to let subordinate groups handle matters and concerns of lesser importance, which would otherwise dissipate its efforts greatly. Thereby the State will more freely, powerfully, and effectively do all those things that belong to it alone because it alone can do them: directing, watching, urging, restraining, as occasion requires and necessity demands. Therefore, those in power should be sure that the more perfectly a graduated order is kept among the various associations, in observance of the principle of “subsidiary function,” the stronger social authority and effectiveness will be the happier and more prosperous the condition of the State.
2. The social policy of the State, therefore, must devote itself to the re-establishment of the Industries and Professions. In actual fact, human society now, for the reason that it is founded on classes with divergent aims and hence opposed to one another and therefore inclined to enmity and strife, continues to be in a violent condition and is unstable and uncertain.
3. Because order, as St. Thomas well explains,[49] is unity arising from the harmonious arrangement of many objects, a true, genuine social order demands that the various members of a society be united together by some strong bond. This unifying force is present not only in the producing of goods or the rendering of services - in which the employers and employees of an identical Industry or Profession collaborate jointly - but also in that common good, to achieve which all Industries and Professions together ought, each to the best of its ability, to cooperate amicably. And this unity will be the stronger and more effective, the more faithfully individuals and the Industries and Professions themselves strive to do their work and excel in it.

 

[reggieM]

False.

No, true. As I cited in Centesimus Annus …

vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_01051991_centesimus-annus_en.html

A workman’s wages should be sufficient to enable him to support himself, his wife and his children. “If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accepts harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice”.25

Would that these words, written at a time when what has been called “unbridled capitalism” was pressing forward, should not have to be repeated today with the same severity. Unfortunately, even today one finds instances of contracts between employers and employees which lack reference to the most elementary justice regarding the employment of children or women, working hours, the hygienic condition of the work-place and fair pay; and this is the case despite the International Declarations and Conventions on the subject26 and the internal laws of States. The Pope attributed to the “public authority” the “strict duty” of providing properly for the welfare of the workers, because a failure to do so violates justice; indeed, he did not hesitate to speak of “distributive justice”.

US Bishops Conference reaffirm this from the prior encyclical of Pope Leo XIII:

Since 1891, when Pope Leo XIII issued Rerum novarum (On capital and labor, the Church has seen a few blockbuster encyclicals. Pope Benedict XVI may be about to issue another one for the ages with the forthcoming Caritas in veritate (Charity in truth).

Rerum novarum addressed the condition of labor and the challenges of the Industrial Revolution’s widespread exploitation of workers. It resounded in the United States as it upheld the rights of employees to organize and rejected communism and unbridled capitalism.

The Church teaches that unbridled capitalism is a form of liberalism, and therefore evil:

But, at the same time, there is an opposite tendency to liberalism and individualism with no limits: they assert their autonomy as individuals and their desire for economic well-being, and they want to get rich at all costs, adopting a culture of unbridled capitalism with a total rejection of religious authority and tradition.
vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/cultr/documents/rc_pc_cultr_01121996_doc_iv-1996-stu_en.html

Pope Pope Pius XI condemns unrestricted Capitalism in Quadragesima Anno #88 calling it a poisoned spring which destroys society.

Just as the unity of human society cannot be founded on an opposition of classes, so also the right ordering of economic life cannot be left to a free competition of forces. For from this source, as from a poisoned spring, have originated and spread all the errors of individualist economic teaching. Destroying through forgetfulness or ignorance the social and moral character of economic life, it held that economic life must be considered and treated altogether free and independent of public authority, because in the market, i.e., in the free struggle of competitors, it would have a principle of self-direction which governs it much more perfectly than would the intervention of any created intellect. But free competition, while justified and certainly useful provided it is kept within certain limits, clearly cannot direct economic life-a truth which the outcome of application in practice of the tenets of this evil individualist spirit has more than sufficiently demonstrated.

Here’s Pope Benedict’s encyclical, Caritas in Veritate condemning unbridled capitalism as being “thoroughly destructive”:

In the list of areas where the pernicious effects of sin are evident, the economy has been included for some time now. We have a clear proof of this at the present time. The conviction that man is self-sufficient and can successfully eliminate the evil present in history by his own action alone has led him to confuse happiness and salvation with immanent forms of material prosperity and social action. Then, the conviction that the economy must be autonomous, that it must be shielded from “influences” of a moral character, has led man to abuse the economic process in a thoroughly destructive way. In the long term, these convictions have led to economic, social and political systems that trample upon personal and social freedom, and are therefore unable to deliver the justice that they promise. As I said in my Encyclical Letter Spe Salvi, history is thereby deprived of Christian hope[86], deprived of a powerful social resource at the service of integral human development, sought in freedom and in justice.
vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate_en.html

Here, Pope John Paul II condemns unbridled capitalism again, equating it to the evils of socialism.

ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS JOHN PAUL II
TO THE PARTICIPANTS IN THE COLLOQUIUM
ON “CAPITALISM AND ETHICS”
vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/speeches/1992/january/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_19920114_capitalism-ethics_en.html
To view this exhibition is to feel ourselves invited to consider the effects on the daily life of millions of people of two extreme responses to society’s need for economic and social organization, two far-reaching aspects of the problem of “Capitalism and Ethics”: on the one hand, an unbridled capitalism which puts the quest for power and profit and the cult of an often soulless efficiency above all other considerations; and, on the other hand, the dangerous - and eventually disastrous - illusion that there can be a materialistic, and essentially atheistic, ideological solution to social problems.

 

[Abu]

“no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist.” (Quadragesimo Anno, 1931, #120, Pius XI).

There has been no similar condemnation of free enterprise because “unbridled capitalism” has never existed in any society or country as a political/economic system like socialism, but in the minds and actions of those people described as “the inhumanity of employers and the unbridled greed of competitors” (Rerum Novarum, # 6). Karl Marx coined the term “capitalism” as a pejorative term to condemn wealth and foment class warfare. The capacity to motivate work and the reinvestment of profits constitute the driving force for the productivity of free enterprise.

No economic laws encourage “hoarding of wealth” and greed – some PEOPLE hoard wealth, some people are greedy. No wealth can be created until it is produced – that’s why the Catholic Late Scholastic system works so well to enable everyone to produce some wealth and to do with it as they choose through free-will. Economic laws are based on the principles of human action – of cause and effect involving God-given reason.

“….the Church looks at specific social, political and economic questions through the lens of the current state of the social sciences, or in the case of economics, up to the time prior to Centesimus Annus, through the eyes of the German Historical School. So, Pius XI’s *Quadragesimo Anno *recommends a corporate state as a just economic order, but it was dropped like a hot potato from there on.” Starting Over: The Rebuilding of Catholic Social Teaching on Economics, Dr William Luckey].
[drwilliamluckey.com/index.cfm/2008/6/30/Starting-Over-The-Rebuilding-of-Catholic-Social-Teaching-on-Economics]](http://www.drwilliamluckey.com/inde...ding-of-Catholic-Social-Teaching-on-Economics])

In Caritas in Veritate (2009), Pope Benedict XVI writes: “The Church has always held that economic action is not to be regarded as something opposed to society.” Further: “Society does not have to protect itself from the market, as if the development of the latter were ipso facto to entail the death of authentically human relations.” (#36).
There is no mention of greed or of capitalism.

The development and tenor of social teaching is clear from the above.

 

[Rocinante]

@Abu,

reggieM said,
“capitalism, in its purest, unbridled form, is condemned as an evil by the Church, just as socialism is.”

you said, “False.”

reggieM then backed up her claim with several quotes that were to the point.

i would have thought that you would have responded by acknowledging that you were wrong and reggieM was right since the quotes she provided make that fact obvious, but instead you just posted some more of your anti-socialism quotes.

what gives? are your opinions impervious to evidence? if so, since such people are not worth talking with, i will make a note of it and add you to my ignore list, so please let me know whether or not you are one of those people who simply can’t be bothered by rational arguments and evidence that contradict your cherished beliefs.

rocinante

 

[MindOverMatter2]

@Abu,

reggieM said,
“capitalism, in its purest, unbridled form, is condemned as an evil by the Church, just as socialism is.”

you said, “False.”

reggieM then backed up her claim with several quotes that were to the point.

i would have thought that you would have responded by acknowledging that you were wrong and reggieM was right since the quotes she provided make that fact obvious, but instead you just posted some more of your anti-socialism quotes.

what gives? are your opinions impervious to evidence? if so, since such people are not worth talking with, i will make a note of it and add you to my ignore list, so please let me know whether or not you are one of those people who simply can’t be bothered by rational arguments and evidence that contradict your cherished beliefs.

rocinante

The person in question either owns a business, which would make make perfect sense of why they are prone to willful ignorance, or they are brainwashed. In either case it is clear to me that this person is in serious error.

Well done to Reggie M, i was not aware that reggie was a she though?

 

[Rocinante]

The person in question either owns a business, which would make make perfect sense of why they are prone to willful ignorance, or they are brainwashed. In either case it is clear to me that this person is in serious error.

i think that is an unwarranted offense to business owners. i am sure that most of them are honest people who admit it when they are wrong. in fact, a business owner probably wouldn’t still be in business if he refused to pay attention to evidence that contradicts his opinions as Abu apparently does.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

i think that is an unwarranted offense to business owners. i am sure that most of them are honest people who admit it when they are wrong. in fact, a business owner probably wouldn’t still be in business if he refused to pay attention to evidence that contradicts his opinions as Abu apparently does.

Perhaps that was a bit out of line. I apologize. Of course there is always honest people, but honesty doesn’t always prevail, especially with the temptation of power and everything else that comes with material wealth. Thats why i imagine that some people, who own profitable business’s, would think that it is not in their best economic interest to vote or give power to any organization or thinking bodies that lean in the direction of socialism or the common good. Wouldn’t you agree that private medical businesses would more likely favor a system that didn’t provide a sufficient public heath system? I could be wrong on that; its just that when i think of Darwinian survival of the fittest evolution and the the current nature of economic society, it see some similarities. When it comes to the evolution of ideas, i imagine that when the desire for material wealth prevails over the common good of human life, certain ideologies will be more popular than others and thus will survive, and some ideas will not survive.