Bill Gates

[Stargazer]

4 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Since I was initially calling for honesty and fairness, and your response was to attribute Marxism to me, I drew the reasonable conclusion.

When I wrote about Marxism, I was referring to your complaints about overpricing, not honesty and fairness.  And I wasn't attributing Marxism to you, as I'd be very surprised if you were such a person.  But even people who might know better can still use Marxist rhetoric unconsciously.  Are you familiar with Marx's Law of Value (sometimes called the Labor Theory of Value)?  Marx insists that things are valuable mainly due to the labor put into them.  It goes something like this: The more labor it costs to make a product, the more it is worth and inversely the less labor it costs to make a product, the less it is worth.

You may recall that you were complaining about how Bill Gates had been cheating people due to overcharging?  Or so I took it, anyway.  According to Marx, once Bill Gates had produced Microsoft Word, very little further labor would be required (since copying disks and printing the packaging, etc is quite cheap), so Bill should have been selling it for, say, $10 a pop, not $100. It is a Marxian argument that Bill selling it for such a price is overcharging, and cheating/stealing.  Which seems to have been your argument, so although you might not be a Marxist, you seem to have been using a Marxian standard.

And all I was saying is that price depends upon cost of production and the demand for the product.  It's not quite so simple as that, as there is also "market-clearing" to consider.  This is anti-Marx, by the way.

4 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Correct.  WWJD or say?  I specifically asked you to reflect on that.

OK, I'm reflecting.  The mirror is very dull, I am afraid. I don't even know where you're trying to go with this.

4 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

If I assume that you do know that history, then would it be fair to say that American robber baron participation with the British in conquest of China and the forcing upon them of opium was merely sharp business practice?  It  might be well to reflect on how many of America's first families enriched themselves in this fashion:  FDR, John Kerry, Henry Cabot Lodge, et al., were the heirs of such robber barons.  Or is that just Marxist folderol?

Again, the term "robber baron" is a mere insult, and uninformative.  Were these men worse, then, than those who inherited Marx's philosophy, such as Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Trotsky?  The former were sharp business practitioners, the latter were mass murderers and enslavers.  Nobody beats Marxists when it comes to being "robber barons", in the actual historical sense this time.  I would never try to argue that these businessmen were always on the side of right, however.  But you seem to want to throw the baby out with the bathwater -- your Gordon Gekko.

4 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

All of them were either extremist POVs, or were completely irrelevant and absurd.

Well, let's say that all your arguments were completely irrelevant and absurd.  Does this advance the debate at all?

4 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

"shady characters," but never "robber barons"?  Is there a double standard operative here? 

Do we even agree what the term "robber baron" means?  By your lights, perhaps Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are robber barons.  

4 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

You bring up "doctrine," but Mormonism has always been known for its pragmatism, and for focus on orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy.  What could that tell you in an economic context?

First of all, it tells me that Brigham Young clearly didn't understand economics and was operating entirely from ignorance.

One of the most ridiculous things I read in that letter was the preening over how they had not raised prices for scarce goods.  Sounds all very prim and proper, and yet it violates an important principle of price theory. 

Now, since you were calling what I was writing "completely irrelevant and absurd" I am not sure whether to take this further, but perhaps I was being extremely unclear. And since you refused to actually address it, other than to say it was "completely irrelevant and absurd," I am unsure if I'm even addressing your objection.  Was everything I wrote "completely irrelevant and absurd", or was it just some of it?  

Anyway, failing to raise prices for scarce and yet desired goods disables an important signal.  That signal is the demand signal.  If rice is scarce, but desired, by all means continue to sell it for $10 per ton.  This price will completely clear the market, all right (i.e. all of it will sell quickly), but since it represents negligible profit, and maybe even a loss, suppliers will see rice as a non-starter commodity, and while it will remain in demand, it will not remain in supply. In other words, the shortage will continue.  If, however, the price is allowed to rise, this will signal suppliers that the commodity is desired, and there is profit to be made. They will then do what they need to do to increase supply, and earn a profit.  And the increased supply will lead to a price reduction, and so on until the price stabilizes near a price called the "market-clearing price."  In economics, market clearing is the process by which the supply of whatever is traded is equated to the demand, so that there is no leftover supply or demand. It's somewhat more complicated than this, but this is the essential mechanism of price theory.  By the way, what happens when government artificially controls prices?  It causes shortages.  Always.

Marx wants to set the price artificially and ignore market signals.  He sets manufacturing quotas.  Which is why Marxian/Socialist economies are constantly in shortage mode.  Except for vodka, of course.  Gotta keep the proletariat drunk on their butts, otherwise they might see the inherent faults in the system.

There's another aspect of the price mechanism that cannot be undervalued, and that is that scarcity/price increase also causes increased innovation in order to provision desired commodities. This even happens in things like software.  Don't want to pay $500 for Microsoft Office?  There grew up alternative suppliers who competed directly with Microsoft, both in features and price.  Remember WordPerfect?  I really liked WordPerfect.  I think I mentioned at least one free alternative, previously.  My favorite image processing software is Paint.net.  It's free.  If I wanted, I could pay $39 for another product that does more-or-less the same thing.  My current video editing software is Visual Studio, by Corel.  It's $89, but I could get another product for much more, or yet another one that has a free version of a more expensive product.  This is a feature of a laissez-faire system, by the way: an increase of choices, sometimes beyond easy decisions!  And it all came about because the first-to-market manufacturer charged a LOT for their product.  Or acted as a robber baron, in other words.

Sorry about all that.  I get all excited about economics and must blabber on.  I might even be wasting my time, but oh well.

4 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

It sounds as though you agree with me and Jordan Peterson on this.  See?  We do agree on something.  

I am relieved.

4 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

I have a sense of humor, Stargazer.  😎

That's good to know!

4 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

To take a specific example from the real world, I very much appreciated the article in WSJ which Milton Friedman authored many years ago in which he pointed out  (with a nice graph) that the War on Drugs was as meaningless and counterproductive as Prohibition.  It never reduced the rate of production & usage of the bad stuff, and only resulted in needless incarceration of huge numbers (which is great for the prison-industrial complex), thus wasting human and monetary resources.  The ideologues among us consistently ignore reality and persist in their destructive behavior. -- even ignoring calls by the late Bill Buckley for an end to the War on Drugs.

Another thing we can agree on.

4 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Only an idiot would conclude from this that booze and drugs are good.  Reality is not the same as divinity.  We must ask once again, What Would Jesus Say?

I take it that Jesus would permit booze and drugs to flow, but ask His followers to eschew their consumption.  Or? 

[Robert F. Smith]

4 hours ago, Stargazer said:

When I wrote about Marxism, I was referring to your complaints about overpricing, not honesty and fairness.  And I wasn't attributing Marxism to you, as I'd be very surprised if you were such a person.  But even people who might know better can still use Marxist rhetoric unconsciously.  ..........................

Marxism is a religion of inevitable and "scientific" laws, with a state capitalist dictatorship of the proletariat, leading ultimately to a prophetic millennium of automatic communist harmony.  To debate it with proponents is to get sucked into a Dantesque miasma of failure and sorrow.  I am not joking:  Bertrand Russell feared Marxism most because it is definitely a religion.

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OK, I'm reflecting.  The mirror is very dull, I am afraid. I don't even know where you're trying to go with this.

Do you imagine that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is even applicable to economics?  Ever given it any thought?  The late Eugene England pointed out long ago in a book review, “the divine economic order is not democratic capitalism, but theocratic socialism,” and he observed that today’s capitalistic Mormons were in the 19th century “dangerously anticapitalistic utopians.”  -- England in Sunstone Review, 2/10 (Oct 1982), 1,25-27; quotes on 27 & 26, respectively; cf. R. L. Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (2005), 105, 154-155.  Is there any truth to those assertions?

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Again, the term "robber baron" is a mere insult, and uninformative.  .............................

Yet you felt at ease using like insults against your chosen target.  I asked whether there was a double standard operative there, but you didn't deign to reply.

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..............................

First of all, it tells me that Brigham Young clearly didn't understand economics and was operating entirely from ignorance.

One of the most ridiculous things I read in that letter was the preening over how they had not raised prices for scarce goods.  Sounds all very prim and proper, and yet it violates an important principle of price theory. 

Volume 9 in Nibley's Collected Works is the most popular volume (Approaching Zion).  Why?  What do LDS people find in there that is so enticing?  See also James W. Lucas and Warner P. Woodworth, Working Toward Zion: Principles of the United Order for the Modern World (Aspen Books, 1997).  Doesn't it say somewhere in the Federalist Papers that, if men were angels we would not need a Constitution?  Could you extrapolate from that to our modern economic order?

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......................................

Another thing we can agree on.

I take it that Jesus would permit booze and drugs to flow, but ask His followers to eschew their consumption.  Or? 

Both Jesus and Joseph Smith drank wine, even if now we live like Nazirites with a vow not to touch any alcoholic beverage.  So it is clearly not vino that is the problem, but only humans who cannot restrain themselves.  They must have their recreational drugs.  If only men were angels . . .

Edited September 28, 2019 by Robert F. Smith

[Stargazer]

5 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Marxism is a religion of inevitable and "scientific" laws, with a state capitalist dictatorship of the proletariat, leading ultimately to a prophetic millennium of automatic communist harmony.  To debate it with proponents is to get sucked into a Dantesque miasma of failure and sorrow.  I am not joking:  Bertrand Russell feared Marxism most because it is definitely a religion.

Do you imagine that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is even applicable to economics?  Ever given it any thought?  The late Eugene England pointed out long ago in a book review, “the divine economic order is not democratic capitalism, but theocratic socialism,” and he observed that today’s capitalistic Mormons were in the 19th century “dangerously anticapitalistic utopians.”  -- England in Sunstone Review, 2/10 (Oct 1982), 1,25-27; quotes on 27 & 26, respectively; cf. R. L. Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (2005), 105, 154-155.  Is there any truth to those assertions?

Yet you felt at ease using like insults against your chosen target.  I asked whether there was a double standard operative there, but you didn't deign to reply.

Which target was that?  I didn't call you a Marxist; I said that you were using Marxist rhetoric, probably unknowingly.  If you feel I was insulting you, you have my apologies, it was not my intent.  There's plenty you didn't deign to reply to, also.  Instead you preferred to call what I wrote "absurd and irrelevant", without bothering to explain what it was that was "absurd and irrelevant."  Perhaps there's nothing for us to discuss here.

5 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Volume 9 in Nibley's Collected Works is the most popular volume (Approaching Zion).  Why?  What do LDS people find in there that is so enticing?  See also James W. Lucas and Warner P. Woodworth, Working Toward Zion: Principles of the United Order for the Modern World (Aspen Books, 1997).  Doesn't it say somewhere in the Federalist Papers that, if men were angels we would not need a Constitution?  Could you extrapolate from that to our modern economic order?

Irrelevant.  This responds to nothing I wrote about.  Perhaps you think you're talking to someone else.

5 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Both Jesus and Joseph Smith drank wine, even if now we live like Nazirites with a vow not to touch any alcoholic beverage.  So it is clearly not vino that is the problem, but only humans who cannot restrain themselves.  They must have their recreational drugs.  If only men were angels . . .

More irrelevancy.

We're talking past each other so fast that the air is about to burst spontaneously into flame.  Have a nice day, Robert.

And besides, I seem to have forgotten this is the Social Hall, and not a place for argument.

[Robert F. Smith]

4 hours ago, Stargazer said:

Which target was that?  I didn't call you a Marxist; I said that you were using Marxist rhetoric, probably unknowingly.  If you feel I was insulting you, you have my apologies, it was not my intent.  There's plenty you didn't deign to reply to, also.  Instead you preferred to call what I wrote "absurd and irrelevant", without bothering to explain what it was that was "absurd and irrelevant."  Perhaps there's nothing for us to discuss here.

......................

And besides, I seem to have forgotten this is the Social Hall, and not a place for argument.

You are no doubt correct.  Especially since you are far more interested in the things of this world than those which are entailed in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which must therefore be irrelevant.  And, after all, you might well be embarrassed to find yourself wrongly accusing Jesus of being a Marxist.

[Calm]

2 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Especially since you are far more interested in the things of this world than those which are entailed in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which must therefore be irrelevant.

Robert, I think you have read too much into Stargazer's comments since he was responding to a specific comment and not giving his global views on the gospel and how it should be expressed in our daily lives and the rest seems like it is veering into mindreading his motivations.  Not good in Social Hall or anywhere else on the board.

[Robert F. Smith]

5 hours ago, Calm said:

Robert, I think you have read too much into Stargazer's comments since he was responding to a specific comment and not giving his global views on the gospel and how it should be expressed in our daily lives and the rest seems like it is veering into mindreading his motivations.  Not good in Social Hall or anywhere else on the board.

Probably so.

[gregory_underscore]

On 9/23/2019 at 8:15 PM, Deep Thinker said:

Just finished watching the  Bill Gates doc on NetFlix. Got me thinking and wanted to hear the opinion of this board. How do religious organizations justify spending the money they spend on glamours buildings, expensive travel and other things when we have millions upon millions of children suffering from starvation and dying by the millions from diarrhea. I’m not just pointing the finger at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (of which I am a card carrying member, but all religious organizations).  After watching this doc, I’m lead to believe that Bill Gates is following what our Savior would have us focus on as opposed to the things I mentioned earlier. If you haven’t seen the doc it is very worthwhile. 

Bill gates was visiting Epstein pads in Paris as of last year. Follow the Prophet put the remote down. 

[Stargazer]

On 9/28/2019 at 5:39 PM, Robert F. Smith said:

You are no doubt correct.  Especially since you are far more interested in the things of this world than those which are entailed in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which must therefore be irrelevant. 

Sheesh, the Gospel isn't at all irrelevant.  

But the things of this world must matter, because we live in it.  I am sure I could live the Gospel even in a Marxist "paradise", but I'd rather not. As it turns out, God desires us to be able to live in freedom, because that fulfills His purposes better than other conditions.

When I read DC 101, I find this:

76 And again I say unto you, those who have been scattered by their enemies, it is my will that they should continue to importune for redress, and redemption, by the hands of those who are placed as rulers and are in authority over you
77 According to the laws and constitution of the people, which I have suffered to be established, and should be maintained for the rights and protection of all flesh, according to just and holy principles;
78 That every man may act in doctrine and principle pertaining to futurity, according to the moral agency which I have given unto him, that every man may be accountable for his own sins in the day of judgment.
79 Therefore, it is not right that any man should be in bondage one to another.
80 And for this purpose have I established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose, and redeemed the land by the shedding of blood.

I ask: is God so unconcerned with the "things of this world"?  If He were that unconcerned, He would never have established the Constitution.  He intends us to live in freedom, that's why He did it.  It is very important to our purpose here on earth.  Speaking of the premortal council, Ezra Taft Benson wrote:

"The central issue in that premortal council was: Shall the children of God have untrammeled agency to choose the course they should follow, whether good or evil, or shall they be coerced and forced to be obedient? Christ and all who followed Him stood for the former proposition —freedom of choice; Satan stood for the latter —coercion and force” (Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Ezra Taft Benson [2014], 60–61 -- found in Lesson 19 of the teacher's manual for Teachings and Doctrine of the Book of Mormon.  Obtained HERE.)

And as it turns out, economic freedom is one of the necessary freedoms.  Therefore, interest in worldly things like economics is not far from the Gospel.  Your mileage may differ, of course.

On 9/28/2019 at 5:39 PM, Robert F. Smith said:

And, after all, you might well be embarrassed to find yourself wrongly accusing Jesus of being a Marxist.

Yes, I would, if I did, but I haven't, and so I won't be.