Stupidity is the root of all evil

Fuck that money shit, money is a red herring. If we people were smart, money would merely be a material thing and people would regard it as such.

You obviously knew the worth of the product that you were receiving. Monetary, OTOH, fluctuates often and one can never be sure what the value is.
If you give me a bushel of corn and I give you a basket of fish we both know exactly what to do with each, without worrying about the worth of it tomorrow.
Just makes much more sense to me.

what is a computer worth? 1000 bushels of corn? bartering works for subsistance, and low-tech societies, but a technologically advanced society runs into major problems.

of course, some would say technology is a bad thing; i disagree, but i understand the position

But, what is the worth of a piece of paper? Do we really know its intrinsic value? Is there any real proof, directly in front of us, that the piece of paper that someone gives you for a service or product rendered is actually worthy of any value?
Can not knowledge be bartered? It doesn't have to be a an actual physical product that you can hold in your hand. The knowledge that midwives gave out for hundreds of years cannot be directly touched, yet it is a marketable commodity. So, in a technilogical society, can't knowledge be bartered in exchange for goods and services (since said knowledge can be both good and service)?

What the hell am I doing here? I'll be back in the Lounge.

though, if we go too far with that, we end up with...money. for example, say you are a scientist. in exchange for your brilliant work for a year, you are given a house. obviously, the company doesnt have houses sitting around, so it tells you to go to Bob's House Shop, with whom they have a deal. They give you a certificate for this house, to present to Bob. Then they say, if you don't really want the house, feel free to barter it to other people, say, for a car certificate and, hell i dont know, a diamond toilet certificate. and so on down the line, until you end up with money:shrug:

so i think what i could say is that this would work in a small community, with individuals specializing in a certain good or service. why i'm thinking about this at 5:30 am, i don't know :)

Why are we thinking about this at 5 am?

Money can be a possible outcome but so can the convenience of services down the road. For example, the same scientist who was hired by a company is instead hired by a community. In exchange for his services, he is given the use of a house, food to eat, etc. Everything that is provided for him is from local crops and are local services. In exchange for the services that are provided to him, he provides the services of his mind to the community. This still works at a bartering level, yet it is a win-win all the way around ( I wish that I had a better example-I know where I'm going w/ this-but my goodness I am tired-will do better w/ a few hours of sleep in me but cannot happen until after 7 am).

who produce a small number of products that are useful to most people. Money works as a medium of exchange that allows individuals to get products without going to a market and making various different transactions to purchase one thing. A medium of exchange gives better indication of the worth of items by giving people a way to determine the value of a product. There are other advantages to an efficient medium of exchange such as better matching of supply and demand and a way to store wealth for use at some other time.

but I am too damn tired, good night everyone.

:hi:

"Stupidity"
www.thedossier.ukonline.co.uk/video_miscellaneous.htm
(3rd from the top)

some quotes:

"Suddenly you realize,
you're sitting there, your mouth feels like cloth,
your chest is covered with potato chips crumbs.

You have a sour feeling, like you've been sleeping on the floor.
You're all alone,
you don't know exactly what you've been watching all this time.

You've been vaguely alarmed, vaguely aroused,
but you're frustrated because there has been no release.

That's a really crummy feeling.

As bad as it is for adults, it's positively criminal to subject children to that kind of thing."

- Mark Crispin Miller, professor of media studies NY University

---

"As for dumbing down, that's done very consciously.."
- Noam Chomsky

---

"According to Marx already, stupidity is 3rd in terms of world historical determining forces. 1st being capital, 2nd being violence."

first off that rambling post for a mile or two then I guess 2 freepers trying to do a tag team disruption. Is it still going on ?
If all the freepers in the world got together they could come up with the brains of a piece of used chewing gum stuck to a sneaker.Freepers you are slipping,come on be more entertaining.

I'm glad I had a chance to post some pics of wounded Iraqi children before the thread was locked. I'm sure they will return to the scene of the crime. The last pics I posted shall haunt them in their dreams if not forever.

I saw the thread before it was cleaned and locked. You handled it really well. :thumbsup:

The Mods took a little to long (it's OK, I understand), so I decided to deal with them myself. The funny thing is, they thought they were "engaging" me, but I was trying to distract them from disrupting other threads by bogging them down in the one they started. I suckered them in, got 'em posting responses to mine, then gave them a dose of reality right before they were deleted - they were definately curious about my pics, but the last set were horrible photos of wounded Iraqi children.

At least one of them will have nightmares, if not all of them. The one thing I WISH I could do is send them to Iraq so that my cousin and my friends could come home. :(

Must of taken them freeps like six months to figure out all them words

If a typical American picks up a newspaper and pulls out the sports section, discarding the rest, it doesn't matter what our pols do.

Dumb voters are straight ticket voters. And more often than not, Republican.

I have a newspaper on my lap right now. One third of the page is a column by Donald Lambro. Anyone who reads that column and believes what it says will be stupider and more ignorant than before. Sometimes the best thing to do with a newspaper is give it to your dog.

it could make him have a tummy ache

he's using it for a toilet, but I suspect you knew that.

you would be ignorant, and ignorance is often confused with stupidity. And often people feign ignorance so that when their mark explains things they can make him look like a gullible fool who actually thought or assumed the other person was ignorant.
So I have my guard up.

Fear not, this is an open line of communication.

Stupidity is really the root cause of so much of the evil we have and are seeing right now.

First of all, intelligence is not the same thing as wisdom.
Second, doesn't history abound with people who were very smart, and yet very evil. The BTK killer was smart enough to avoid capture for over two decades. Nazi scientists who engaged in experiments on humans, were presumably smart enough to have become medical doctors.
Third, I am not sure I can think of a real life example, but traditionally some stupid people are stereotypically kind, generous, honest, and hard-working. Often-times they possess virtues that many smarter people lack.

But their stupidity makes them easy pray to the smart and evil ones.

I will prey for you.

And they buy all the bullshit the evil people feed them. If that weren't true... would Bush be in power? Would the US be in Iraq?

the stupid victims are only the branches.

Group stupidity is something evil capitalizes on.

mutual survival was assured when neighbors helped each other raise their barns without being monetarily beholden to each other. I can only wonder what the era's greedy assholes thought about that. Guess they all went into banking and were the one's who foreclosed on the farms.

I'm opposed to the bloodsucking corporatists who are thieving this country into the ground in the name of global empire, and the ignorant kool-aid addicted rabble who enable them.

Objectivists, BAH! Just elitist Neoliberals with another flavor of kool-aid to sell. Relying on reason to morally guide people under a Free Market society is all well and good, dear Objectivists -- ON PLANET VULCAN. You live on Earth. And humans are nowhere near as enlightened or logical as they need to be for your pipedream to work.

Fuck off. We get enough of the "let's redefine reality" nonsense from the bloody Neocons. It causes nothing but misery.

Because stupidity is what allow evil to proliferate. Bad government, injustice, poverty, bigotry, etc..., only thrives because people are too uninformed to challenge it.

:hi:

sempre me durmo tarde.

Voce e brasileiro?

Não rapaz, sou da aqui mas sou Brasileiro dentro a minha coração. ;) Morei lá e agora estou morrendo de saudade. :cry:

E você?

Morei um ano e meio na Bahia. Fiz otras viagems tambem.

Onde estava que voce morou? O que o que fez la.

Fiquei em Ouro Preto, Rio, Aracaju, Olinda, Juazeiro do Norte, Crato, Natal, Brasília, Salvador, e mais.

Grave música e dança folclórica (video): Candomblé, Reisado, Chôro, Forró... muito forró quando estava a epoca de São João. Também, estudei música na universidade.

E você? Que fiz?

Fiz pesquisas de historia na Bahia e no Rio. Adoro a musica brasileira. Passou carnaval no Brasil?

Passei São João em Aracaju até Fortaleza (muitos lugares no Nordeste)... Caju e suco de caju, oba! :9 ... toquei e dançei muito forró - Baião, Xaxado, Xote, etc. :D

ja ouviu fallar? Fica no interior da Bahia. La tem a guerra das espadas. Foi so a graca de deus que me consequi sair viva.

Passei carnaval em Salvador. Foi increivel. N'aqella epoca, a musica dos Afro blocos eram otimos. Ouvi fallar que actualmente nao e tal boa.

Fiquei no Pelorinho e vi Olodum, etc. mas não conheço o interior da Bahia... só Ceará, Pernambuco, Alagoas, e Rio Grande do Norte.

Toquei com uma escola de samba, lá perto da Universidade do Rio, na praia perto a entrada do bondinho - Pão de Açúcar. Era super-legal! :)

"Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can't help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal and execution is carried out automatically and without pity."

However, ALL "individual" life comes wrapped in a death sentence. :shrug: