the philosophy thread (country, myspace)

[cardboard adolescent]

that would make you 1/4 swedish

(think about it)

[TheUsedToolguy]

What are your guys philosophic ways saying my convos weren't about philosophy. Anything and everything is philosophy. Most of the convos in philosophy books go like this:

Aristotle: What did you just say?
Plato: What is what?
Aristotle: Wait, I thought the first question we must address is when is what?
Plato: No, there can be no when before there is a what
Aristotle: Oh, so what is when?
Plato: No, no, no, why is when, haven't you learned anything Aristotle

Uh, yeah, most of it's real hard to interpret unless you're B.C.
Philosophy is defined as the love of knowledge, and the ultimate goal of philosophy is to find the practices in life which you deem to be reasonable, and apply them in real life.

That said, here's a dilemma facing our country. I understand these are sensitive times, and bless all those whose lives were taken in the shooting at VT. My argument deals with our economy, and is predicated on two major footfalls perpetrated by our government.

First, let me talk about the concept of compound interest, and a revelation I had the other day. It seems that I'm the only person who realizes this doesn't work. When you hear about compound interest, you think, 'wow, interest off of interest, awesome, I'm making money off of money that wasn't even there before' Well, there's a huge flaw in that: It doesn't work. When people earn compound interest off of stocks or mutual funds, they see their profits increase exponentially over the years. Let's take a look at an example:
A. Guy invests $10,000 in a mutual fund, and earns a 10% return off of it. That's a fair interest rate, and yet not nearly as high as some people make. He starts out with 10k. At the end of the first year, his 10k will have risen to 11k. The money should continue to rise at this rate every year, because the private sector he/she invested doesn't continually ro rise exponentially. However, instead of interest rising at a flat rate, it begins to rise astronomically.
At this point you're probably saying, 'what is he talking about? Yes it does.' Well, it does and it doesn't. The owners and the decision makers of the company are the ones making a ton of money, and while their business is growing they have to keep hiring more employees, and their overhead-wages, business expenses, etc. go up. So, since they want to keep all their pockets fat, they don't have the money to pay you those eye-popping interest rates. So the money comes from the banks, and the government. Well, the government gets the money from the average joe, who either just doesn't give a crap, because the enjoyment of life was beaten out of him in school, or they're just too dumb to know. They do this by paying us lower wages than what we're actually worth, and by increased taxes. So, think about that, next time you think about compound interest. 'It's an amazing thing, isn't it?' Well, no that's what they want you to think. It seems amazing, you're making money off of nothing. However, this is where the moral dilemma kicks in. The people who have tons of money, are the ones who can benefit even more and more, almost into galactic proportions from compoound interest.
Well, that's all fine and good, the U.S. government has gone to great lengths to stifle the poor man's efforts, while the rich man hoard's the fruits of the toiler's plow. It's somewhat understandable: most people only want to think about getting from one day to the next. If they're able to do that, they don't care much about being rich and famous. Of course, public schools also do a good job to make millions of people feel inferior from grade school on, and so naturally, they feel they are worth less, and therefore will earn along those lines of thinking.
There's something the government didn't take into account, though, and that is all the bridges they have burned with other countries. This wouldn't be such a problem, if our population didn't continue to grow. It would work just fine. However, where are those countries gonna be, when we put all those tariffs and embargos on them all these years, and then we come crawling back to them. "Oh, I'm so sorry, those were different leaders, these are different times." Well, impoverished countries don't forget that easy. You see, with a population surge, as we're experiencing, we need more places to send our exports and we can put more people in our factories, and make more products, and receive money and goods in return for those products. However, it isn't so easy to convince other countries to do this, when we've been ludicrously shoving our imperialism down their throats by
a. bombing them (just to show them who's boss)
b. placing huge tariffs on certain countries (not the richer ones)
c. placing embargos on certain countries (not the richer ones, we don't need to trade with the poorer ones, we can just steal their goods through coercion, similar to the way we took this country)
d. constantly meddling in other countries affairs, and assassinating leaders of other smaller countries, if they aren't going to play ball by our rules.

[Urban Hatemonger]

Tldr

[TheUsedToolguy]

Originally Posted by TheUsedToolguy

What are your guys philosophic ways saying my convos weren't about philosophy. Anything and everything is philosophy. Most of the convos in philosophy books go like this:

Aristotle: What did you just say?
Plato: What is what?
Aristotle: Wait, I thought the first question we must address is when is what?
Plato: No, there can be no when before there is a what
Aristotle: Oh, so what is when?
Plato: No, no, no, why is when, haven't you learned anything Aristotle

Uh, yeah, most of it's real hard to interpret unless you're B.C.
Philosophy is defined as the love of knowledge, and the ultimate goal of philosophy is to find the practices in life which you deem to be reasonable, and apply them in real life.

That said, here's a dilemma facing our country. I understand these are sensitive times, and bless all those whose lives were taken in the shooting at VT. My argument deals with our economy, and is predicated on two major footfalls perpetrated by our government.

First, let me talk about the concept of compound interest, and a revelation I had the other day. It seems that I'm the only person who realizes this doesn't work. When you hear about compound interest, you think, 'wow, interest off of interest, awesome, I'm making money off of money that wasn't even there before' Well, there's a huge flaw in that: It doesn't work. When people earn compound interest off of stocks or mutual funds, they see their profits increase exponentially over the years. Let's take a look at an example:
A. Guy invests $10,000 in a mutual fund, and earns a 10% return off of it. That's a fair interest rate, and yet not nearly as high as some people make. He starts out with 10k. At the end of the first year, his 10k will have risen to 11k. The money should continue to rise at this rate every year, because the private sector he/she invested doesn't continually ro rise exponentially. However, instead of interest rising at a flat rate, it begins to rise astronomically.
At this point you're probably saying, 'what is he talking about? Yes it does.' Well, it does and it doesn't. The owners and the decision makers of the company are the ones making a ton of money, and while their business is growing they have to keep hiring more employees, and their overhead-wages, business expenses, etc. go up. So, since they want to keep all their pockets fat, they don't have the money to pay you those eye-popping interest rates. So the money comes from the banks, and the government. Well, the government gets the money from the average joe, who either just doesn't give a crap, because the enjoyment of life was beaten out of him in school, or they're just too dumb to know. They do this by paying us lower wages than what we're actually worth, and by increased taxes. So, think about that, next time you think about compound interest. 'It's an amazing thing, isn't it?' Well, no that's what they want you to think. It seems amazing, you're making money off of nothing. However, this is where the moral dilemma kicks in. The people who have tons of money, are the ones who can benefit even more and more, almost into galactic proportions from compoound interest.
Well, that's all fine and good, the U.S. government has gone to great lengths to stifle the poor man's efforts, while the rich man hoard's the fruits of the toiler's plow. It's somewhat understandable: most people only want to think about getting from one day to the next. If they're able to do that, they don't care much about being rich and famous. Of course, public schools also do a good job to make millions of people feel inferior from grade school on, and so naturally, they feel they are worth less, and therefore will earn along those lines of thinking.
There's something the government didn't take into account, though, and that is all the bridges they have burned with other countries. This wouldn't be such a problem, if our population didn't continue to grow. It would work just fine. However, where are those countries gonna be, when we put all those tariffs and embargos on them all these years, and then we come crawling back to them. "Oh, I'm so sorry, those were different leaders, these are different times." Well, impoverished countries don't forget that easy. You see, with a population surge, as we're experiencing, we need more places to send our exports and we can put more people in our factories, and make more products, and receive money and goods in return for those products. However, it isn't so easy to convince other countries to do this, when we've been ludicrously shoving our imperialism down their throats by
a. bombing them (just to show them who's boss)
b. placing huge tariffs on certain countries (not the richer ones)
c. placing embargos on certain countries (not the richer ones, we don't need to trade with the poorer ones, we can just steal their goods through coercion, similar to the way we took this country)
d. constantly meddling in other countries affairs, and assassinating leaders of other smaller countries, if they aren't going to play ball by our rules.

Dangit, wishyourdatewaslonger, stop bumping your little texts.

[Kevorkian Logic]

Here's my simple form of a philosophy discussion:
I had with my friend today (who goes to a different school):
She's going to be J and I am SW

SW: Who's this Brian guy, his messages are a bit personal?
J: Some fat guy he's really sweet but extremely touchy.
SW: Dude, like i've noticed that from most fat guys. I thought that was just me who got overly touched by fat people, good. Why can they get away with that?
J: My friends and I thought it's because we feel bad that their fat.
SW: yea...

[TheUsedToolguy]

I agree with that. When I was in high school, a lot of the more popular girls in my school would be really overly sweet to the fat, and other offputting people. Of course, their attempt at being genuinely sweet was so transparently fake I almost wanted to not even breathe. This brings me to another topic:
Why are people so fake in our society? Why do people act really nice to a person to their face, and then talk absolute garbage about them behind their back? Why are we even here, if we can't at least be honest?

[Kevorkian Logic]

All I got was you calling me popular and fake?
that's mean and untrue. I'm too cynical to be popular.

[cardboard adolescent]

Answer me this: what's the point in being honest when it gets you nowhere?

[TheUsedToolguy]

That's true; it doesn't do a lot for you in society, but it does a lot for your dignitudinal self *hides under bed*

[cardboard adolescent]

dignitudinal?