double post .

You and I obviously have different opinions as to what constitutes “talking in a civil manner”.

They don’t.

If “the sentence we’ve been altering” is "when trade is equal there are no consequences.", then …

No.

I did not say the sentence we’ve been altering. That is why I said it was your illogical conclusion. But it now appears that it was a misquote and not a conclusion.

Then maybe I didn’t make myself clear enough on this point: the “unequal exchange” I was referring to related only to the “items being exchanged”, not the “action of exchanging”.

Yes, that’s “close”. Although “unfair” (your word) and “unequal” (my word) have different connotations, as do “haunt” (your word) and “consequences…show up” (my words).

So this is, to me, just one example of what I consider to be, in your words, “inserting [your] own meanings on to what [I've] said”.

You just said that they did and that's why you left them out.


I'll break it down. When -trade is not equal- -there are always consequences-
The first part is always the case, like the moon going around the Earth. If something is always a certain way how can you say it causes anything? You've never seen it the other way so it's not appropriate to say it is the cause of anything.

When is an exchange of items ever equal?


And it's the first good example. I was actually trying to do that. Because you've rejected it I'm left with much worse options for what you are trying to say.
Can you entirely rephrase the unequal exchange and consequences thing for me?

If that’s what you got from what I said, then you misunderstood.

Let me put it simply:

What you said did not explain what I said.
What you said explained what you said.
What I said explained what I said.

I don’t agree with the first part as a premise. (see below)

Since the equality of an exchange is always based on a subjective estimation of relative value, an exchange is equal whenever anyone estimates that it’s equal.

But that doesn’t mean that everyone else estimates it as being equal.

Now if you want to introduce a third party into the picture, and say that both sides must be bound by the estimations of that third party, then fine. But in that case we’d be talking about arbitration, not exchange.

I’ll try.

Any interaction has consequences. That’s simply a statement of cause-and-effect. Like “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction”. So there are “consequences” to every exchange – whether it’s equal or unequal.

Now the context of the original statement (“Anytime there is an unequal exchange…”) was referring to this statement of yoursAnd my statement (“Anytime there is an unequal exchange…”) was a statement of what I considered to be a general rule that applied to your specific example.

Does that help?

Ah, but why would you ever make equal exchanges? If you don't think you are gaining anything then you are just as well off as if you had not made the trade.

Yet there is the problem of when anyone knows about how we accomplish more by specializing so that other members of the group can do things for us. With this knowledge we must recognize that any desirable trade grants us more than we had before and only a very bad trade could accomplish so little as to leave us in the same position as we were prior to the trade.

Exchanges that leave us worse off than we were are not voluntary and require at least some form of coercion and such exchanges are deemed criminal in all major societies. Are you only speaking of such trades as these?

You still seem to misunderstand what I mean by equal exchange.

There are two separate and distinct comparisons to consider here.

1) A comparison of the relative values of the items being exchanged. If I estimate that yours is worth more, to me, than mine, I would desire to make an exchange. And if the exchange is made, I would “gain”. Now if that’s all you’re talking about as far as “added value” goes, then fine, I agree that in that sense there is “added value” in the exchange.

But notice that the relative difference in value between the two items is not created by the exchange. It existed before the exchange took place. And in fact, it exists whether the exchange takes place or not.

And also notice that that that comparison is still only an estimation of the relative values of the items, not the exchange. The equality of the exchange is made by…

2) A comparison of the “added value” on both sides. That is, if I consider that I got just as much “added value” as you did, then I consider the exchange to be equal.

Now I agree that an exchange with no “value added” is all but pointless.

But I still maintain that an exchange can be equal, even when both sides consider that they gained by it.

No. see above.

That's exactly where there's not added value. In that exchange you get more but the other person gets less (from your own view.) The sum is still the same.

The thing about zero sum thinking is not about "how much do I have" and "how much does he have." For zero sum the thinking is "there is X total and if I want more someone else must have less."
With out more advanced interactions we know that by making exchanges we increase the total and more frequent exchanges make this effect stronger.

In the past we measured out economies based on if our value was growing or shrinking but we have transitioned more into such a point or progression where we instead measure if it is growing faster or slower.

We make exchanges so often now that this single exchange thinking no longer has much relevance. In the past an exchange could have an impact on how much work would get done but now in many cases the exchanges are the work themselves.

The old form was a reason to loot and plunder your neighbors but with the wealth of non-zero-sum interactions our lives are now built upon that kind of behavior is becoming less and less viable as a way to actually improve your situation. We are transitioning to a point where greed requires generosity.

I have not read this whole thread so I'm sorry if I interrupt a conversation.


It is not possible to end wars and violence without ending freedom.

It is very sad.

What real freedom has to do with violence and wars ?.
I am free but I do not like violence and I do not like wars .
.

I do not like violence or wars either. But imagine a world government where any disagreement or struggle was solved with the annihilation or imprisonment of both sides of the conflict. There might be peace but no freedom.

Imagine a world where differences of opinions were outlawed. Where people were not allow to protest the status quo or government.

If you want freedom and growth you have to accept the conflict. It is by trial that we finally learn to love and understand each other. It is the way it is.

You cannot force a rose to bloom nor can you force a person to love another.

I confess that you lost me here. The what sum is the same as what?

If that is what you call “zero sum thinking” then I would agree that by that definition, “zero sum thinking is fallacious.

But then I must also say that that definition doesn’t really equate to my thinking. So I’m not thinking “zero sum” by that definition.

Hmmmm…..

Nice speech. (No sarcasm intended.) Very eloquent and articulate.

But again I must confess that I didn’t understand most of it. And the parts I (think I) did understand, I mostly disagree with.

Well violence are wars are things people do when they think they have something to gain.

As chimps in a forest killing and over wise driving off nearby groups gets you access to more ripe fruit (plus finding ripe fruit isn't something you can do as a large group so they have to spread out enough to be vulnerable in the first place.)

As a subsistence farming group with a weak government killing neighboring groups gets you a comparably stable life, even with them wanting to kill you too.

As a count or duke or whatever it gets you gold AND it helps cut back on a population that's expanding much too quickly for people to keep dividing up their land to their children. Additionally at around that point prestige starts to play a big role and the "we'll get out of the depression by creating demand for weapons of war!" sort of mechanism starts to work.

As imperialists it secures all manner of resources that allow for better products of all sorts.

As a democracy? Well with where we are now it almost costs us more to secure resources ourselves and the demand to prepare for war thing sort of doesn't work when we were already spending billions to support the best army on the planet. With mass media people get weary of war almost before it's even started and prestige drops through the floor as soon as people bring up how many sons and daughters died in a war nobody wanted.


War and violence in general DO make sense. We wouldn't have ever started that behavior if it didn't work in some situation.
Thing is we're moving out of that situation and it's becoming rarer and rarer for war to actually be a good idea for any party involved. If the 3rd world all got industrialized (and eventually it will,) we'd almost ever have reason for any more war.

Just take a look at the countries that want nukes and such now. Why? So they can strike first -if they need to.- They don't have such a strong economy that they stop gaining things by interrupting it to flat out take things from their neighbors. It's still zero sum for them and that means that they don't only need to be able to strike first but that given the chance they will. If they didn't have that kind of thinking they would have been wiped out long ago by people who did because it used to work really well.

What we have now is something that works better, and interrupting it with wars sucks for us. They don't have it and at least the people in charge in those places are in zero sum thinking so they want to take from their neighbors so that they can get big enough to take some of that prosperity from us. That would work for them for awhile but everyone in a trade based society understand that by just dividing the spoils of war out like that you'd never even get to as good as we have it right now.

People are smart. Now don't get me wrong, they'll also as dumb as dirt. It's just that they're smart enough think about how much something will cost them and what they will gain from it. They don't always judge them perfectly but if they definitely can't gain anything from war they don't decide to go to war.

With the growing benefits we get from times of peace everybody gets more by not going to war. We hardly ever do it anymore.

Now, if we're smart about it in the coming decades we can make it so that people don't gain very much from this sort of thing on local scales. People make poor judgments when they are desperate so just having support systems for life's unexpected turns has already helped to reduce this kind of stuff a lot. Mass media and people with certain agendas have gone a long way to make people think otherwise but it's as plain as day if you know how to look.

Everything can change with education and technology . Man came a long way already : from tents and horses to skyscrapers and mighty jetliners......etc. Also fortunately we are not chimpanzees and we we ahve brains to differentiate between right and wrong . If we all work for peace we can achieve a war free planet . Yes we can.....!!.

the rub is of course, that we will never ALL work for peace. we'd ALL have to agree on EVERYTHING for such to occure. we'd ALL have to agree to erase ALL borders for such to occure.

At least hearing this in the face of what I've been saying reaffirms that it's not anything people are used to hearing.

Well, in case you decide to start reading the posts in this thread here's the gist of it: we don't need to agree, we just need to gain more from working with people we disagree with than we can physically take from them.
And the good news is that we're getting there.

If I may, I'd like to modify that a little...

We don't need to agree on everything, we only need to agree that we gain more from working together toward a common goal than we do from working against each other toward opposing goals.

That's the way I see it anyway.

Exactly. It just won't happen here... voluntarily.

So you all gave up on peace....... .

Double post

No, its called accepting what is.

We can only control our own peace of mind.

I can be at peace but I don't know how to make other people do it.

It is the law of allowance.