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Bono: “Capitalism takes more people out of poverty than aid”

He's certainly stirred up the rightwing blogosphere. I supect their reportage is somewhat biased, but haven't found a reputable independent source in the first two pages of google results.
 
Bono has no idea what he's talking about.
 
What drivel. Capitalism would only "help" the poor if they could then in turn use those poor to make more of a profit by putting them to work in their slave wage factories and stores.
 
Erod said:
LOL, no you're not. You're for stripping capitalists of their profits and incentive so you can create as many dependent voters as possible.
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I'm always amused when rightwingers hear a liberal tell them what liberals think, and they ignore it and believe what Rush Limbaugh told them liberals think. It's always hilarious.

Oftencold said:
Mostly because when somebody says "gray area," we hear "I am uncomfortable with the probable truth and so refuse to examine it."
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Examining the truth is what leads to understanding gray area's. Knee-jerk populism is what leads to overlooking them and assuming that the first emotionally charged reaction must be perfectly true.

Oftencold said:
If you can't accept what's black and white, you're in danger of dying in a zebra stampede.
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Luckily, there aren't any zebra herds around here, so I can continue to develop my understanding of the world around me in relative safety.
 
StillBallin75 said:
Even the most pro-welfare liberal realizes that for Third World economies to prosper, they need to have capitalism done right (not the crony capitalism that currently exists in a lot of those places) - else all the foreign aid and welfare you're sending in is wasted and ends up in the hands of the wrong people. It has more to do with proper governance than anything else.
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I think you are giving pro-welfare liberals more credit than they deserve here. The fondness for such types for centrally directed projects and aid is pretty... well, enormous.


Consider, for example, the effect of the same argument made here, as it applies to domestic policy.
 
Lysander said:
What drivel. Capitalism would only "help" the poor if they could then in turn use those poor to make more of a profit by putting them to work in their slave wage factories and stores.
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Yeah. How many Indians and Chinese have been pulled out of poverty in the last couple of decades, again? The greatest reduction in human privation in our species history, as I do recall.

Free Trade is good for all of us, and those of us who are most vulnerable are hurt most of all by it's hindrance.
 
StillBallin75 said:
Even the most pro-welfare liberal realizes that for Third World economies to prosper, they need to have capitalism done right (not the crony capitalism that currently exists in a lot of those places) - else all the foreign aid and welfare you're sending in is wasted and ends up in the hands of the wrong people. It has more to do with proper governance than anything else.
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Well, this is certainly news to me. I was under the impression that socialism was supposed to be the salvation of those people. What happened to that?
 
Grendel said:
I'm always amused when rightwingers hear a liberal tell them what liberals think, and they ignore it and believe what Rush Limbaugh told them liberals think. It's always hilarious.



Examining the truth is what leads to understanding gray area's. Knee-jerk populism is what leads to overlooking them and assuming that the first emotionally charged reaction must be perfectly true.



Luckily, there aren't any zebra herds around here, so I can continue to develop my understanding of the world around me in relative safety.
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An insufficiency of understanding, and inadequate modeling of reality lead to gray areas. This is per force, since the whole concept of a "gray area" is that one's model, philosophy or theorem has failed to account for observed facts.

Further, most people who have diee in zebra stampedes probably thought that they were living in relative safety, until black and white issues overtook them.
 
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Oftencold said:
An insufficiency of understanding, and inadequate modeling of reality lead to gray areas. This is per force, since the whole concept of a "gray area" is that one's model, philosophy or theorem has failed to account for observed facts.
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No, it's the observation of the multitude of facts that leads to understanding the gray areas. Failing to see half the facts leaves one both ignorant and, at the same time, certain of his own rightness. Most of these people are unable to even accept that there are facts they have not yet learnt, because it would undermine their simplistic, childish model, philosophy or theorem of reality. Ignoring all of the facts except the ones that support ones simplistic world view is what leads to black-and-white thinking.

In other words, it's infantile thinking.

Some good reading:

Splitting (psychology) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Black and White Thinking (Splitting) Is Both a Borderline and Narcissistic Trait | Psychology Today
 
Grendel said:
No, it's the observation of the multitude of facts that leads to understanding the gray areas. Failing to see half the facts leaves one both ignorant and, at the same time, certain of his own rightness. Most of these people are unable to even accept that there are facts they have not yet learnt, because it would undermine their simplistic, childish model, philosophy or theorem of reality. Ignoring all of the facts except the ones that support ones simplistic world view is what leads to black-and-white thinking.

In other words, it's infantile thinking.

Some good reading:

Splitting (psychology) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Black and White Thinking (Splitting) Is Both a Borderline and Narcissistic Trait | Psychology Today
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One of the first thing my psychology prof explained to our class was that psychology was a basically silliness, that no matter how well excepted current "theory" in psychology, it will be a rejected model in a few years.

But again, and I'll try to use smaller words, what do you suppose a "gray area" is, other than a set of observations which your existing model can't properly process?
 
Oftencold said:
One of the first thing my psychology prof explained to our class was that psychology was a basically silliness, that no matter how well excepted current "theory" in psychology, it will be a rejected model in a few years.
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I knew you were going to dismiss it out of hand. Do you want to know how I could see into the future so well? I'll show you . . .

Grendel said:
Failing to see half the facts leaves one both ignorant and, at the same time, certain of his own rightness. Most of these people are unable to even accept that there are facts they have not yet learnt, because it would undermine their simplistic, childish model, philosophy or theorem of reality. Ignoring all of the facts except the ones that support ones simplistic world view is what leads to black-and-white thinking.
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Oftencold said:
But again, and I'll try to use smaller words, what do you suppose a "gray area" is, other than a set of observations which your existing model can't properly process?
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Because the world is too complex to fit into a single "world view" in such a way that the immeasurable amount of information available is unneeded. To try to fit the whole world into something so simplistic is childish. Reality is too full of unknowns to wrap up so easily. However, if trying to actually learn and think and comprehend and process is too difficult, it's much easier to just ignore everything outside of a simple, easily consumed set of preconceptions and ignore everything that doesn't fit.

That's where black and white thinking comes from. It's not from having a worldview that's so vast that it includes everything. It's from having such a simple understanding of the world around oneself that one thinks he can fit the whole thing into a neatly wrapped package. In order to maintain that simple concept of the world, most information has to be dismissed. That's why people with black and white thinking are always so thick, and have such simplistic understandings of the world. It's also why they're only versed in one side of multifaceted arguments. Anything that doesn't fit into their model is dismissed.
 
LowDown said:
Well, this is certainly news to me. I was under the impression that socialism was supposed to be the salvation of those people. What happened to that?
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The populations who bought into it saw massive starvation and then they changed their minds.
 
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