Posts by Anthony Garcia19

placidwolf27 said:That’s all governed by federal law

The real question—and there's always a catch—is how much influence an owner (and I’m certainly not talking about some guy on Main Street here) can actually exert over those regulations...

I'd say a massive amount.

But when you're looking at an individual, the government sets the rules for taxes, social security, and various other fees. Those are limits set by the state that they control regardless of what the owner wants. Once that's out of the way, the owner—or group of owners, depending on the setup—decides how to use and split whatever is left over.

Zachary Mendoza2 said:Generally speaking, I find more fulfillment in environments built on cooperation and mutual sharing rather than those defined by competition and conflict. 🙂
However, I occasionally enjoy playing Monopoly, too. It’s a bit selfish, I know, but nothing brings me more satisfaction than wiping everyone out and cramming all four players into my little house while they fume about it. 😳

😂

After a lot of back-and-forth, your response might actually be the best one here. It proves that happiness doesn't come from acquiring stuff or taking it from others, but from things money simply can't buy. 🙂

It’s basically a roadmap for how society should evolve.

And the whole Monopoly thing just supports the idea of homo ludens, the idea that humans are essentially beings meant to play—which is something I mentioned right at the start. 😉

Karen Rodriguez3 said:That's just straight-up wrong.🤷

Why not? I mean, isn't the owner the one calling the shots?

Karen Rodriguez3 said:Nah, I don't think individuals hoarding stuff is some natural state of being. It's more like a byproduct of how people act, I guess. And if you tried to stop it by any means necessary, it would probably just lead to stagnation, or maybe even a total step backward.

Maybe I'm missing something here... What exactly do you mean by acting by nature? If you're talking about being creative, sure, that's definitely part of being human. But why feel the need to keep all that work to yourself (that individual buildup)?

If this isn't our natural state (since you said it isn't), then why does it seem like most people function this way? It's hard for them to even imagine a different kind of world.

Zachary Mendoza2 said:But how can one do that when 🤷
If I am surrounded by good people who share with me, I want to be that same way toward them. But if they seek to enslave me just to enrich themselves, then I want to do the same to them 😳

Fair enough, but where do you actually feel more comfortable and happy?
I think I already know the answer! 🙂

Andrew Booth29 said:At our core, humans instinctively try to grab as many resources as possible just to survive. Honestly, that's true for every living creature on this planet. The issue here is that you're applying a priori moral judgments to certain things, which inevitably leads to an emotional conflict.
The Eskimos build their communities the way they do because that specific structure is the most efficient path to securing maximum resources for the group—and by extension, for each individual within it. They, much like any other society, act to maximize the survival probability of every single member. When a person sacrifices something for the sake of the community, they are doing so because it serves their own interest. It isn't necessarily a "profit" you can see in a bank account or something that manifests immediately. Humans are speculative beings at heart.
If you hold onto moral judgments claiming that working for others is "good" while working for oneself is "bad," you should probably expect to find yourself in a state of internal conflict.

I don't see myself that way, so there's no internal conflict for me.

I don't subscribe to the idea that working for yourself is bad and working for others is good.
The distinction doesn't make sense to me. I just focus on doing what I love—stuff that actually makes me happy. Honestly, I don't really care who gets the credit or the results; if it helps someone who needs it or makes them smile, then fine by me.
That's a pretty different take than your theory about sacrificing for a community just to get ahead later...

Maybe I'm just from another planet! 🙂

Zachary Mendoza2 said:I have been trying to avoid answering whether we are all truly equal. 😁
I am not sure what you mean by that. We are equal in terms of our basic needs: food, shelter, self-actualization, and so on. We are also equal because we belong to the same species, with two arms and two legs, faces, etc.
Otherwise, I would say we are quite different. 🤷
In fact, I can distinguish people at first glance by their appearance, the sound of their voice, or how they speak. I can even recognize people on this forum just by their writing style; forget avatars and usernames. 🙂

I’m talking about our core values—the natural ones. What comes first: a) power over others and owning stuff, or b) cooperation, helping out, freedom, and being creative? Do we want todominate and control or share and work together?

Andrew Booth29 said:The very fact that people are working so hard to prove a point just shows they’re arguing against an opposing view—which, if you glance at this forum, is clearly the dominant mindset these days. Good grief, the entire philosophy of socialism is built upon that exact myth. Entire nations and whole continents have fallen straight into that trap.
One also needs to be careful about falling into common logical fallacies. Just because a gain isn't necessarily caused by someone else's loss doesn't mean that *every* gain works that way. What simply doesn't hold up is the assertion: "One person's gain is always someone else's loss."

You could draw a similar parallel with the myth that success is solely the result of an individual's talent. It's definitely not true that skill and profit are always proportional (unless by "skill" you actually mean being "street smart" or shady). What people usually ignore is that anyone's success is built on the labor and ability of countless others. Most of those people only get whatever the owner decides to give them, rather than what their actual contribution is worth.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying gains can't happen without losses. That's usually how it works today, but if we boost overall prosperity and distribute things fairly, that wouldn't have to be the case anymore.

Andrew Booth29 said:What even defines a "good" community versus a "bad" one? It's an abstract, subjective metric at best.
Take, for instance, a tribe surviving in a harsh, semi-desert region—I think it was somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa, if my memory serves—that would kill a newborn if they judged the child to be physically or mentally weak, or even if it was born with a minor defect. Is that a "good" community or a "bad" one?

Actually, "good" and "bad" are objective categories. People just interpret them differently based on their own perspectives.

The example you brought up isn't easy to answer quickly. At first glance, it might not necessarily be a "bad" community if life is so brutal that they're choosing between two evils—picking the lesser of two bad options. If there isn't enough food or space to be compassionate without risking everyone else's survival, then everything depends on those specific circumstances.

Andrew Booth29 said:People are social predators—think along the lines of wolves hunting in packs. But there’s a fundamental distinction here: a wolf is mostly driven by raw instinct, supplemented by a bit of learned behavior. A human? We exist in this constant, messy tug-of-war between instinct and what we’ve been taught—all while being blessed with a significant amount of intelligence. We actually have the capacity to override those primal urges and act purely rationally just to hit a specific target. At the end of the day, humans are defined by adaptability. That’s why you won't find any use in simple labels like "people are good" or "people are greedy." It isn't that binary. A person can be both at the exact same moment—it all just comes down to whatever serves their interests most effectively.

So, what’s actually worth it in the end? What does a person value most? Is it all about the material stuff—money, power, and status? Or is it that sense of personal freedom? To me, there's nothing better than having the liberty to just be yourself and actually chase those creative sparks alongside a community of people who get it.

So, you think I’m calling humans social predators—like some kind of wolf? What makes you say that? I was just looking at those Eskimos from the example used to argue against the theory.

Andrew Booth29 said:Evolutionary psychology has actually shed a massive amount of light on why we act the way we do—even debunking some of those deeply ingrained myths and misconceptions that people still cling to today. Take, for instance, the persistent fallacy that one person's gain must inherently necessitate someone else's loss. It’s a tough pill to swallow, but unfortunately, humans seem genetically hardwired to believe in that zero-sum game, making it incredibly difficult to dismantle the myth.
At our core, we are adaptable opportunists. We don't possess massive muscle mass, sharp claws, or formidable canines; we aren't sprinters, nor can we carry much more than our own weight. Honestly, if you compare the density and sheer strength of human muscle to anything else, it's pretty underwhelming—it's about as sturdy as a boiled chicken. Just look at a bison. Most animals are several times stronger than a human per unit of muscle mass. Even a moderately sized dog could easily take down an adult man without breaking a sweat.
We essentially traded all that physical prowess for a single organ: the brain. That highly adaptive brain is what allows us to navigate constantly shifting environments, project ourselves into the future, and weigh the long-term consequences of our actions. Our entire physiology is subservient to the brain. For example, we lost those powerful canines because we sacrificed the specific muscles at the top of the skull that control the jaw. Primates still have those muscles, which results in a slight indentation in their skulls and a smaller cranial capacity. We effectively discarded our most potent biological weapon just to squeeze out a few extra percentage points of brain volume.

From where I'm sitting, it's actually the exact opposite! 🙂
It feels to me like most people today are working overtime to prove the myth that any success they have is strictly due to their own individual talent.

I don't think it's about being genetically programmed to believe one way or the other. To me, it just looks like a free-thinking process where everyone ends up with a different conclusion.

Zachary Mendoza2 said:Karen Rodriguez3: I see your point; you believe those individuals have simply shaped their environment to suit their inherent nature.
My view is different. I don't believe in a fixed "nature." Human nature is essentially the capacity to become anything. If you take a child from one community and raise them in a completely different one, they will adapt and adopt a totally different worldview. That worldview becomes who they are.

I suppose there are exceptions to my rule—for instance, psychopaths seem to be born that way; it's just their nature, though we don't truly understand why. But a typical child can be raised to be a decent person, or they could just as easily be raised to be a killer or a thief, without ever questioning if their actions go against some internal compass.

Anthony Garcia19: It seems what I shared with Karen Rodriguez3 actually addresses your concern as well. Aside from those born as psychopaths, you simply have people who experiment with cheating or greed, perhaps out of pure curiosity. That is entirely human. Then you have those for whom this behavior isn't new; they’ve seen it firsthand, lived through it, or were raised surrounded by it. The world isn't a bubble where deception is some unknown concept.
Simply put, it exists and cannot be eradicated. It can only be kept in check through constant effort to root it out.

You didn't quite hit the mark there. Specifically, why is one community one way and another community something else (one good, one bad)? Based on your last point, it sounds like both you and Karen Rodriguez3 believe people aren't all built the same.

Karen Rodriguez3 said:Not at all. I'm not saying someone is just born bad. Or rather, I'm not implying that every single person is inherently rotten.
Since you brought up those two examples of civilizations developing in isolation, I don't really see that as proof they evolved specifically because of their surroundings. To me, it feels more like individuals with similar worldviews just ended up building an environment that fits them. If you know what I mean.🤷

So, you're actually arguing that we aren't all equal (like I mentioned in point one earlier), rather than saying humans are just naturally greedy?

Karen Rodriguez3 said:I don't think human nature "returned." It never left. It was just shoved into this forced shell that barely let it breathe. You can't do that without a dictatorship, obviously. Those scammers didn't suddenly appear after the guidance stopped; they just finally showed their true colors. So, I guess, what does that actually say about what people are really made of?

At first glance, it looks like human nature is just bad—greedy and selfish.

But there are two other ways to look at this, which I mentioned earlier to Frogger:

1) We aren't all built the same. Some people are naturally greedy and selfish, while others are truly altruistic and compassionate.

2) Those negative traits—the greed and the ego—only flared up because there weren't enough resources available during that period to guarantee everyone total personal freedom. Personal freedom is the ability to express oneself fully and reach one's creative potential, which is the ultimate goal for any individual. When that need goes unmet, people scramble to find fulfillment any way they can. This implies that personal freedom sits at the top of our value system, with altruism following right behind it.

Which one is actually right? Honestly, that’s a tough one even for us mere mortals!

Zachary Mendoza2 said:No, it is quite simple: humans evolve through interaction with their environment. Someone cheats someone else, gets away with it, and profits as planned. They try it again and see that it works, so they adopt a new behavioral model. The environment might not respect them, but it tolerates them, and he profits. Or, if he uses theft, people fear and despise him, yet they do not stop him. Then he finds someone similar to organize with, making them stronger and more successful together. Eventually, some dissatisfied people notice this and say, "Why shouldn't we act just like these successful people?" Everyone else hates them and complains, but in reality, they are just more successful than their surroundings. So, I follow suit.
It becomes infectious. Once it spreads, it becomes obvious that general social morality has gone to hell, people retreat into themselves, and the opportunists take over. Resourcefulness becomes the ideal, while compassion, sharing, empathy, brotherhood, and unity are seen as part of that old, failed system—a system that hates you because you are successful.

Weeds grow faster than crops, stealing the sunlight, water, and nutrients while reproducing more quickly. Weeds grow wherever they can, whereas crops require a specific, favorable environment. If you don't constantly pull the weeds, you will soon have nothing but weeds in your field.

Time, you still haven't tackled my main question: why is the environment the way it is? Why do certain people start cheating and grabbing whatever they can? What's their core nature—are they good, bad, or just chameleons?

Otherwise, things play out exactly like you said. One person sees someone else getting ahead and things go south. To protect yourself in a system where everyone is grabbing, you usually end up grabbing too (even if you don't realize it, since you aren't really looking at who you're taking from).

Zachary Mendoza2 said:Anthony Garcia19: Neither one serves as a foundation. The true foundation is a person's capacity to become anything at all.
Essentially, you need an environment that prizes empathy, creativity, selflessness, and cooperation. At the same time, selfishness and exploitation must be met with absolute disgrace. This requires constant effort. If you don't maintain it, the first rotten apple in the barrel will ruin everything.
Communism initially succeeded because party officials went out to people who might not have even known how to read or write. They carried Marx's Capital and explained the essentials—human rights, the difference between labor and exploitation, and what defines a healthy society versus a sick one. But once that instruction faltered, charlatans took over. These people were mistaken for being "clever" or "resourceful," when they should have been cast out and punished. Human nature immediately resurfaced and communism collapsed: the apples rotted, and today, egoism is treated as a virtue while man becomes a wolf to man.

So why does that happen? Unless those folks arguing that humans are just naturally greedy and selfish are right... What does your chameleon theory say about all this?

Maybe it's just basic math: there's always a few bad apples in any group. A loud, selfish minority usually finds a way to force their own values on the peaceful majority. Maybe we aren't all cut from the same cloth after all.

I'm not quite sure. I haven't really sat down to dwell on this whole theory about humans being chameleon-like...

If the core of being human is just adapting to whatever environment we find ourselves in, then how do we explain the origin or the shifts in those environments? It's a tricky one. Unless you believe our surroundings aren't actually shaped by us, but by other forces—like nature, some higher power, or something else entirely. Honestly, I’m leaning toward that second option. If I don't, my own theory about human nature being inherently "good" just falls apart. See, if we assume humans are the ones building their own worlds, then the people who argue that we're naturally greedy have a point—because only a bad person could create a bad environment.

I need to chew on this a bit more...🙂

But I'm totally with you on the second part of your post. It's exactly what I was getting at earlier when I mentioned how some systems are just fundamentally good or bad...

Karen Rodriguez3 said:I’d love for you to walk me through how that would even work in practice, you know? Like, how do we avoid holding back the most driven, smartest, or most capable people...
Because honestly, that isn't just some capitalist myth or something invented in the modern era.

Exactly. It goes way back, all the way to our earliest communities. Sure, history shows us different types of societies, but we tend to overlook them just because they weren't technologically advanced enough.

A different way of living can't happen without spiritual growth—replacing our current values with a totally new system where material things aren't the top priority anymore. Most people think that's impossible because they assume humans are just naturally greedy and selfish. Honestly, I don't see that as our core nature. I see compassion, friendliness, creativity, and a sense of playfulness at our foundation. To me, selfishness and greed are just leftovers from a brutal struggle for survival in the past. Those pressures still exist today, just in different forms and for different reasons—but I won't get into that, or we'll end up debating politics.

Zachary Mendoza2@

What, back when people were physically stronger? Just kidding—nobody should be getting stoned, then or now. 🙂

This is just a phase in our social evolution. It’s all a byproduct of materialistic concepts. Once we move past them, this whole problem will just vanish.

Scott Hall39 said:There is no such thing as "cash." We're talking about equity in a company that an owner built from the ground up. There isn't some vault where they sit around bathing in dollar bills. They use that wealth to generate more wealth through reinvestment, which benefits the rest of the world to varying degrees. It depends on how they invest and how you define "development." But honestly, that concentrated capital has far more growth potential than the combined assets of a bunch of middle-class people of the same scale. Most regular people just spend their money on houses and cars. Massive fortunes are often poured back into developing new technologies.

So, wealth is just a tool.

Motivation? It can be philanthropic. I'll build even more wealth just so I have more to donate. As for the luxury lifestyle—yachts, private jets, designer clothes, mansions—you get used to that stuff easily. You could ask any moderately wealthy person: what do you actually need? You can live fine without half the clothes in your closet, jewelry, or fancy cars. A luxury lifestyle is a slippery slope toward habit.

Even if someone spends money like Bloomberg on expensive yachts, someone else is building those yachts, and someone else is getting paid because of those activities. That said, what American billionaires do—from Rockefeller to Carnegie and beyond—by donating and founding universities, clearly has a much larger developmental impact.
Without the ultra-wealthy, things wouldn't be possible; the average person would spend those billions entirely differently, and the government hasn't exactly shown much interest in managing capital allocation that way. And even when they do, you have to wonder how much they were just copying the private sector's lead!

We already touched on the necessity of the wealthy at the start of this thread. To avoid repeating myself, my take is probably best summarized in my reply to Frogger (post #49).
There’s also a discussion about this over on the Spirituality subforum, in the thread started by Vivekananda: Is money "the work of the devil"?. Like you, most people today find it impossible to imagine a highly advanced society without powerful, wealthy individuals driving it forward. Personally, I disagree.