2019 resolution: (try to) do not buy anything new! Boycott of the new?

[Adrien (ex-nico239)]

Yaisse but it's free so I don't quibble

[Ahmed]

I understood correctly, however, in general, the cost in terms of negative consequences on nature has nothing to do with the sale price, or even with the cost of production.

[GuyGadebois]

No, but where did you see that we are in a capitalist system

We are very far Image

With 57% of GDP going into public finances we are closer to Stalinism than to capitalism. Not to mention the contribution of the deficit each year ...

And with 80 billion tax evasions we find ourselves in this situation. We are closer to a banana republic than to Stalinism.
It seems that Carlos Ghosn is on the run ... like Jacques Doctor at the time.
Healthy reading:

Fuck your neighbor
An underground history of capitalism
Dany-robert DUFOUR

This test is the result of astonishment. The one who grabbed me when I came across a writing now forgotten, Research on the origin of the moral virtue of Bernard de Mandeville. It was in 1714, at the dawn of the first industrial revolution, that Mandeville, philosopher and doctor, published this sulphurous libel, in addition to his famous Fable of the bees. This writing is the hidden software of capitalism because its ideas have infused all modern liberal economic thought, from Adam Smith to Friedrich Hayek.
No more love for your neighbor! We must entrust the destiny of the world to the “worst of men” (the perverts), those who always want more, whatever the means to be employed. They alone will be able to make wealth grow and then trickle down to the rest of men. And this is the true plan of God from which a quasi-paradise on earth will result. To do this, Mandeville developed an art of governing - flattering some, stigmatizing others - which will prove to be much more devious and more effective than that of Machiavelli, because based on the establishment of a new regime, the liberation of urges. We understand why Mandeville was nicknamed Man Devil during his lifetime and why his paradise looks like hell.
Three centuries later, it turns out that no other idea has transformed the world so much. We are richer overall. Except that runoff would tend to flow upside down: the richest 1% of individuals now own as much as the remaining 99%. But we are beginning to understand the cost of this Faustian pact: the destruction of the world. Can we still obviate this becoming?

[Ahmed]

Although little known *, this Mandeville did, but it is not a small merit, that to synthesize what its time contained and which was little or not perceptible by the others. In doing so, he obviously inspired more well-known and more influential characters and this helped to accelerate this evolution ...
These two sentences are emblematic of the current confusion of ideas:

Except that runoff would tend to flow upside down: the richest 1% of individuals now own as much as the remaining 99%. But we are beginning to understand the cost of this Faustian pact: the destruction of the world.

The first suggests that capitalism has failed to "enrich" everyone, which means in hollow that the enrichment, goal of capitalism would be sufficiently desirable in itself for a reform to operate its "virtuous turnaround": thus, without s 'to question this category of capitalism, it is accepted as a universal standard, without understanding the contradiction which consists in "saving" a concept (more exactly, a category) independently of the system and of its functioning ...
The second reinforces the ineptitude of the previous one: the destruction of the World would not be less with a more egalitarian distribution ...
All that remains very smokey, since thought of by the author of the commentary, but this system being unequal and destructive by design, it is completely vain to try to produce effects which are contrary to it ...

* For my part, I only knew the fable of the bees, that said, this text was very explicit and left no doubt about the "philosophy" of its author.

[GuyGadebois]

Although little known, this Mandeville did, but it is not a small merit, that to synthesize what its time contained and which was little or not perceptible by the others. In doing so, he obviously inspired more well-known and more influential characters and this helped to accelerate this evolution ...

Real junk ...
"Be as greedy, selfish, spendthrift for your own pleasure as you can be, because in this way you will do the best you can do for the prosperity of your nation and the happiness of your fellow citizens"

[Ahmed]

Adam Smith, in his "Essay on the Origin and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" will write the same in more polished terms; I quote the idea from memory: "it is not because of his virtue that the baker will produce good bread, but it is by responding to his well-understood egoism that he will best provide for the well-being of his clients". As the son of a pastor, it is already not nothing (he had written a previous work: "Theory of moral feelings", a book which unfortunately I have never been able to access)!

[GuyGadebois]

The same in false back ... I prefer the openness of the first.

Your book:
https://www.puf.com/content/Th%C3%A9ori ... nts_moraux

[Ahmed]

Thank you, but I never wanted to burden myself with too many books (in addition, it may be boring!). But you should be able to access the resources of a university library ...

PS: I am happy to have been able, thanks to you, to read the argument of this book. This theme will be developed a long time later, as a functional and gendered split of capitalism: to men material production and operational rationalism and to women feelings and "care" ...

[GuyGadebois]

Thank you, but I never wanted to burden myself with too many books (in addition, it may be boring!). But you should be able to access the resources of a university library ...

PS: I'm glad I was able, thanks to you, to read the argument of this book.

When I read "book which unfortunately I have never could access ", I have the impression of immense regret. Basically, my preoccupation was proportional to your style: a little much.

[Ahmed]

Yes, it was a regret, but not immense and among others, since it is impossible to read everything ... What interested me is that I had read "The Wealth of Nations" and that I was curious about the content of the other as its counterpart ...
I admit however that his flagship work, apart from a few passages (always quoted) very "removed" and quite innovative, is repetitive, feeble and very laborious in that it is lost in tricky details; in short, you have to be strongly motivated to read it in full ...