[The One and Only...]

Originally Posted by theapportioner

You wanted capitalism to -solve- the problem of desire, to reduce it in an efficient manner. You wanted people to be -happier-. Now you have 180'ed on your original points.

I did not want capitalism to solve the "problem" of desire. I wanted it to make people happier. The two are not the same.

Hunting for food and picking berries started before capitalism did. It is "rediculous" to say that we innately desire reality TV, or mobile phones with cameras, or Prada shoes, or titanium golf clubs, or 100 foot yachts. You pick the least relevant examples in your defense of capitalism's relation to 'innate desire'. There is no gene in my DNA that corresponds to "Prada shoe desire".

Capitalism is one of the oldest systems on earth. It just wasn't called capitalism.

The form is irrelevant, it is what the object does. You aren't listening to me.

Yes, we have reached a summit with "Joe Millionaire". Thank you, Adam Smith.

You speak of that as if it were inherently bad.

You can stick your pleasure unit in your inherent crap. OF COURSE the form is relevant; reality TV is a new "form", as is the automobile. These have only been recently desired (and sometimes, fetishized). Capitalism exploits and manipulates psychological drives by creating new objects and "forms" that are to be desired. But humans create objects of desire independently of capitalism or any other economic system. I'm arguing here not to totally dump capitalism, but to challenge your original point. Capitalism will only make people desire more and more. The agents of capitalism don't want you to desire less. Can desiring more be bad? Of course. Look at cigarette addiction. Or worse, heroin addiction. Can it be good? of course. Can it be ambiguous? Of course. Capitalism isn't interested in creating "good" desire over "bad" desire - capitalism is only interested in creating desire, period. And bad desire does not lead to happiness. *stomps foot down*

All you are doing is spouting crap about capitalism and ignoring how the system works.

Cigarette and heroin addiction are not inherently bad.

Desire for certain ends are inherent because of the instinctual drive. The mind works on the axiom that in order for these ends to be met, something must fulfill them, and that those things are axioms. The form of the object is not desired, but the object is.

And to avoid confusion, good and bad here are in the moral or value sense of the terms. I am not talking about human mental health - as for that, one example that's close to home is the college admissions process. My brother just sent in his applications. My parents, in their desire for him to get into a good school, had went through a lot emotionally, let's just leave it at that. So, on instance where excessive desire does not lead to good mental health. Capitalism doesn't care either way.

There is no morality, and pain and suffering are integral, necessary parts of life. Without pain, there can be no pleasure. But this is aside from the point. Did you not forget that *SHOCK* capitalism modifies pleasure ratios in inegalitarian manners?

The point of this thread was to show that capitalism is more egalitarian in pleasure distribution than economic equality, not to say that it is absolutely perfect.

And as an aside, 'looking cool' can't possibly be innate because the meaning of the term depends on the social context of its use. One desires to 'look cool' depending on one's social circumstance. I don't think a nun goes out of her way to 'look cool'. Or is 'looking cool' innate for some people and not for others? Or take heroin. I don't desire it. If I never did it, I won't desire it for the rest of my life. But if I shot up every day you bet I'd desire it. It may be said that we have a propensity for heroin addiction. But is that the same as saying my desire for heroin was innate? Absolutely not. Do you even know what you are talking about??? You are soooo far out of your league here.

Innate desires differ because of genetical variance.

Face it, your concept of human nature is trash.

Your concept is even worse.

OF COURSE desire CAN'T be quantified!! It has no absolute values! It only makes sense to talk about it in relative terms (more than, less than). It only makes sense to talk about 'amount of desire' in a relation of comparison for a single person. You can't even generalize it to the population because the flows of desire are so subjective, complex, and dynamic. Even the assigning of say, degrees of depression from 1-10 is quite methodologically flawed, and there are a number of articles out there that show how so. And depression is a far simpler problem as there are a number of effects of depression that are conserved in depressed people. And if you tried to quantify desire, how would you know you had desire quantified? An all-too common error of social scientists and economists is the synecdochic fallacy. And finally, would this quantification be in any way useful in determining the amount of desire of a single person?

I only brought up 'pleasure units' to parodize your idea.

Desire, pleasure - these are nothing more than chemical reactions within the brain. I am a materialist. EVERYTHING can be quantified, it is just that some things are too complex and have too many variables to accurately do so.

Hence, I believe that the future is already written out for us and cannot be changed, because I am a determinist (although I believe in free will too).

The focus group was an invention of Robert Merton's, maybe 30 or so years ago. Are we to believe that ONLY NOW is capitalism working the way it should be??

The price system is a method of trial-and-error that serves the same function as quantitative analysis in determining what to produce, although the latter certainly helps.

Wrong. I think you are just afraid to think about it.

Yeah, right. I don't have an open mind.

I'll get to this more later. But reasoning entails understanding, and understanding entails assigning meaning. This isn't possible without language. And even a parrot that imitates its owners speech patterns cannot be said to 'understand'. As for spatial 'reasoning' (confused use of the word in this context), well, fish seem to know where to swim. Nothing special or uniquely human about it. Higher forms of spatial intelligence also depend on language.

Understanding does not require a linguistic classification. I can logically determine that if I don't want a book to wet in the rain, I put it in my backpack without having to talk to myself.