Income Tax: Hudson

[flintlock]

Re: Income Tax: Hudson

I don't see why it matters if income is "earned" or not. It should be taxed the same. Is this is what Hudson proposes? If so I'm all for it.

[BuckarooBanzai]

Re: Income Tax: Hudson

And capitalism is somehow less nihilistic? Michael Hudson makes the consistently important point that Karl Marx was writing about an improvement on the theories of Smith and Ricardo. While Smith was writing about what to do in this transition from feudalism to a more productive social order, Marx was writing about what to do after capitalism. In the end both represent the madness of the enlightenment era.

Freedom is an illusion. No man is free, unless he lives in the wilderness alone in which case he will be dead in a short time. Humans are and always have been social animals who live in communities and have specific duties. Material prosperity destroys the souls of people, leading to the very state of nihilism you mention. Both capitalism and communism could provide endless amounts of useless garbage people don't need, they would still be evil.

Before I leave you with this Nietzsche quote, your discussion of private property is completely baseless. There is of course no such thing as private property. You enjoy a piece of land because you live in a civilized state that has quality breeds of humans capable of maintaining civilization. The moment the guardians are gone, anarchy will ensue and your property will be ravaged. You claim the benefits of civilization while not understanding how it came to be, nor what is necessary to maintain it.

Why are libertarians so crazy? I'm just not sure what to do with them when the revolution comes. Maybe ship them off to Africa, the libertarian paradise of anarchy?



Whether it is hedonism or pessimism, utilitarianism or eudaemonism - all these ways of thinking that measure the value of thing in accordance with pleasure and pain , which are mere epiphenomena and wholly secondary, are ways of thinking that stay in the foreground and naivetes on which everyone conscious of creative powers and an artistic conscience will look down not without derision, nor without pity. Pity with you - that, of course, is not pity in your sense: it is not pity with social "distress", with "society" and its sick and unfortunate members, with those addicted to vice and maimed from the start, though the ground around us is littered with them; it is even less pity with grumbling, sorely pressed, rebellious slave strata who long for dominion, calling it "freedom". Our pity is a higher and more farsighted pity: we see how man makes himself smaller, how you make him smaller - and there are moments when we behold your very pity with indescribable anxiety, when we resist this pity - when we find your seriousness more dangerous than any frivolity. You want, if possible - and there is no more insane "if possible" - to abolish suffering . And we? It really seems that we would rather have it higher and worse than ever. Well-being as you understand it - that is no goal, that seems to us an end , a state that soon makes man ridiculous and contemptible - that makes his destruction desirable .

The discipline of suffering, of great suffering - do you not know that only this discipline has created all enhancements of man so far? That tension of the soul in unhappiness which cultivates its strength, its shudders face to face with great ruin. its inventiveness and courage in enduring, persevering, interpreting and exploiting suffering and whatever has been granted to it of profundity, secret, mask, spirit, cunning, greatness - was it not granted to it through suffering, through the discipline of great suffering? In man creature and creator are united: in man there is material, fragment, excess, clay, dirt, nonsense, chaos; but in man there is also creator, form giver, hammer, hardness, spectator divinity, and seventh day: do you understand this contrast? And that your pity is for the "creature in man". for what must be formed, broken, forged, torn, burnt, made incandescent, and purified - that which necessarily man and should suffer? And our pity - do you not comprehend for whom our converse pity is when it resists your pity as the worst of all pamperings and weaknesses?

Thus it is pity versus pity.

But to say it once more: there are higher problems than all problems of pleasure. pain. and pity; and every philosophy that stops with them is naive.

Well, if you don't even believe in the notion of private property, we don't have much to talk about. You have revealed exactly where you stand: against freedom, and for collectivism.

If you think that capitalism is nihilistic, you either don't understand the first thing about capitalism, or you don't understand what the word "nihilism" means. Collectivism IS nihilism, because collectivism represents a complete lack of faith in the individual, which is to say, a complete lack of faith in life itself.

The foundation of the free market capitalism, on the other hand, is the faith in the power of individuals, acting alone, to not only survive, but thrive.

To suggest that one is the same as the other, is completely absurd.

It's like your argument is, 1 = 0.