I wish I could make the slave ship vertical to juxtapose it with the Business Tower
Hint: The theme is wage slavery but you don't know what that is so this is amateur propaganda art
Above: Fall 2007 Neckwear Line by Capitalism International: Labor Edition
Here we have blue collar, white collar, and the always oppressive shackles
Just don't be white after Labor Day
Vincent Van Gogh was never asked to write 100 words after he laid down some fierce brushstrokes but I will try and explain my juxtaposition and art...
What is slavery? It is not physical coercion as textbooks illustrate. It is giving up the power in you, me, and every individual human being to subsist. In a highly, highly, Wii say agin, highly technological society, it is uncomfortable to see such inequity in social organization (the blue collar, white collar juxtaposition). For instance, sons and daughters of blue collar workers will probably not be as inclined to participate in this website because they don't have the resources due to the economic system (state capitalism)
Do you agree that a capitalist minority of the population controls all of the necessary non-human components of production (capital and land) that other people (workers) use to produce goods?
Please address the bold question rather than the pictures. You won't :) because it's witty
O, I'm counting 64 words (hundred word minimum). I'll give you three hours to give this post substance and relevence before I delete it (this is Mike being generous).
--Mike
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thanks for being generous mike (this is Andrew being facetious)
Thanks for cooperating.
Now that you've given us text to respond to, I will do so:
Yes, I do believe it's fucked up that the common worker (white collar or blue collar) is so undervalued; however, I don't believe that it is a result of our capitalistic system, but rather the existence of governments (I say while listening to Rage Against the Machine). While corporations take advantage of workers in alarming and disturbing numbers, I believe that certain laws enacted by the government as well as the bureaucracy therein have launched the upheaval of the scum-sucking, monolithic corporation.
Specifically, intellectual property and government contracts have cemented these corporations into Soviet-style monopolies. Because governments give big businesses these juicy, pork-barrel contracts and because big businesses can protect their monopolies through patents, trademarks, salesmarks, copyrights, etc., competition is almost completely squashed (in the big picture). Without competition, businesses has nothing to do but to expand beyond its own means, and just like an overexpanded country (think Imperial Rome, Nazi Germany, Imperial France), they begin to expand beyond their means and their profit lines, which means that wages get cut, that third world workers are employed for pay that sometimes is even poor for their own countries.
Capitalism would work perfectly if government got out of the damn way.
P.S., I know that mvenus929 has already told you of this, but you haven't stopped. Please use the reply links located at the bottom of the comment to which you wish to reply. Because comments are threaded, it makes it much easier to see the flow of a conversation/argument when everyone uses the reply feature.
--Mike
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I'm curious as to why your posts are so hostile and elitist to your readers. Are your priorities to provoke anger, or generate dialogue?
How can you separate dialogue from emotion. Especially an emotion as familiar to the human race as anger. Anger and sadness are linked.
Anger may be a (physiological and psychological) response to a perceived threat to self or important others, present, past, or future.
Is rap music there to provoke anger or generate dialogue?
Is South Park there to provoke anger or generate dialogue?
Was Tom Paine writing Common Sense to be elitist. Publishing a text called Common Sense is so elitist and hostile when the people who are reading the pamphlet are Common People. And look what happened as a result. Tom Paine was a loser right and we have no reason to thank him for his elitist jargon.
Really good question, but who asks the Creator or Artist for the answers.
How can you separate dialogue from emotion
Descartes, Socrates, Locke, Hobbes, Rothbard, Rand, Spinoza, Kant, Hume, Von Mises, Rockwell, Leibniz, Berkeley, Copernicus, Gallileo, Rousseau, Marx, Euclid, Quine, Hofstadter, Plato, Aristotle, Voltaire, and Newton all did it pretty easily, and their dialogue was very effective - more effective than Nietzche, Mussolini, or Hitler who use nothing but rhetoric, anger, and hatred to make their points.
--Mike
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Descartes, Socrates, Locke, Hobbes, Rothbard, Rand, Spinoza, Kant, Hume, Von Mises, Rockwell, Leibniz, Berkeley, Copernicus, Gallileo, Rousseau, Marx, Euclid, Quine, Hofstadter, Plato, Aristotle, Voltaire, and Newton all did it pretty easily.
Ayn Rand on homosexuality: "Morally it is immoral, and more than that, if you want my really sincere opinion, it is disgusting." http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/bio/biofaq.html#Q5.2.6
I remember when I used to be an anarchocapitalist. I read all of BAstiat and Von Mises and the broken window fallacy was good. Very entertaining in theory, but destructive in practive. I remember reasing Von Mises and he said that every dollar spent was like a vote of approval. That dollars are like voting. That is more dangerous than anything Mao wrote in my opinion but I could be wrong.
btw If you like Milton Friedman, then I would like to chat with you on IM so I can tell you why I gave up anarchocapitalism.
You say Socrates separated emotion from dialogue? what person who doesn't speak unless in question form can be called unemotional? a person who eats the hemlock rather than be silenced is very emotional and irrational (something we need to start the revolution Socrates would say... I totally agree)
Let's look at the opposite case of Galileo. An Italian that stifled racanted his life's work because of the governing body (Catholic Church). I'm sure he was guilty and emotional the rest of his life.
Rousseau was the world's first Romantic. Romanticism is a rage against the machine. Reacting to science (Descartes) and the Enlightenment by reverting back to passion and feeling. Something very necessary during the Industrial Revolution where there was a machine and the people felt alienated by it. Art putting emphasis on the granduer of nature. (Very Very Socialist)
Sarcasm is a vehicle for social change. It is the last refuge of a chaste soul who's prvacy had been invaded according to Dostoyevsky. Why can't I be sarcastic like South Park.
Which leads me to Voltaire. Voltaire was so smart and so rebellious that he was censored! This only strengthened his drive and cemented his current image as a Witty Genius Rebellious Dude. Something I hope I could be one day. I am desperately waitig to be censored. Candide was a very disrespectful text at that time. Hostile and elitist all the way :)My kind of guy. O and very SOCIALIST
At this point I realize that books are not dialogue. Books are pretty much monologues. Do you read dialogue of those authors and the people they talked to because if you do I bow before you. I think you just read their books or throw their names down for dramatic effect.
Dialogue could not really be recorded like it is today with Televisions which also shifts the whole political landscape.
Many successful, credible writers are perfectly capable of separating emotion from their dialogues. That's what makes them professionals. Lawyers tend to do the same thing. As Mike pointed out, so do many theorists.
I suppose we differ in style.
You see, the tone with which I present content varies, depending on what I would like to evoke from my audience-- how I would like them to respond.
If I'm trying to encourage dialogue, for example, I might choose to write on a controversial topic, but I don't wish to alienate people by writing about that topic in a way that's abusive to people or makes them feel inferior or not worthy of participating in the conversation. It's not really a conversation then, is it?
Generating dialogue is not about the content; it's how that content is presented. South Park? Well-researched, satirically funny, intentionally offensive to everyone. Ever thought about why it's presented as a cartoon with 4th-grade characters? Maybe it's easier to talk about why it's offensive, or why it's accurate, or what makes it funny-- when it's not presented as some hostile, blatant criticism of its subject.
Anyway. I'm not entirely sure why I've been responding, because your tone is exactly that which I don't like to engage with. Nevertheless, I hope we can engage more civilly in the future-- because how can we progress if our speaking terms can't even be fought through to get to the topic?
------
According to the History Channel, if you can't laugh at yourself, your social intelligence is about that of a Neanderthal.
...but the obvious difference is that unlike the people roped together and confined in the slave ship, the people in the office building and at the desks can get up and leave whenever they wish.
percivale
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"Vi Veri Vniversum Vivus Vici." ~ V.
"the people in the office building and at the desks can get up and leave whenever they wish"
That begs the question percivale. But thank you for analyzing my artwork.
I am trying to compare physical coercion with monetary and economic coercion. There is no "free" market as Embryowassup said earlier (his one blog about capitalism was something I completely agree with except anarchocapitalism is an idea pushed by bankers and international financiers. I am the opposite but similar: anarchosyndicalist)
Percivale is like the only one who responds to me. Why did no one even answer my bold question? I will start to ease off the anger if someone answers my bold question. I have an awful frustration tolerance when I put up a blog and people ignore my main message just like ya'll.
Now, don't get me wrong. I am not so naive that I would even begin to suggest that monetary and economic coercion aren't very real and meaningful concepts, I did get the message that you were implying. I think the comparison is interesting, and to a degree relevant, but I think that equating these forces with physical coercion drastically inflates the negative connotations of economics while risking the dilution of the horrors represented by the practice of slavery.
Its not that I don't see your point, but I think that you loose credibility when you jump directly to the extreme ends of the scale like this. Yes, economic coercion is similar on some level to physical coercion, in the same way spanking your child for pulling his sister's pig-tails is similar to punching a guy at a bar in the face because he talked to your girlfriend. But, the question is whether or not the similarities you emphasize are meaningful to the message you are trying to convey. In this case, I'm not sure that they are.
Basically, your point is well-taken, but I think your over-selling it.
percivale
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"Vi Veri Vniversum Vivus Vici." ~ V.
I differ from most anarchocapitalists in the whole "no coercion" dictate. I believe that violence is a great vehicle for social change when necessary, so I don't think any iron-fisted businessman would espouse my point of view.
--Mike
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...when it comes to the use of violence. I am not a pacificst by any meants, but all too often "necessary" seems to be confused with "expedient."
percivale
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"Vi Veri Vniversum Vivus Vici." ~ V.
True, but why not?
--Mike
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Preciate it and I will keep taste in mind.
I just didn't have faith people would understand wage slavery unless I put up the shackles. Do you think when black people today call themselves shackled or under the chains of oppression should stop because they are overselling it to?
I do because they lose sight of the reality.
OVer-selling things and extremeness is a very slippery slope because I can destroy my whole message by attaching negative pessimistic connotation.
...and yes, I think that when people talk about oppression, they would serve their causes better to speak about the specifics of their own experiences, than to rely on grandiose metaphors which while clever, and maybe even accurate to a degree, don't really serve to evoke the kind of self-aware connection in which the oppressor realizes that the object of his tyranny is not some of emotionally distant object, but an actual, living and breathing fellow person.
percivale
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"Vi Veri Vniversum Vivus Vici." ~ V.