Machine of Loving Grace Posted August 12, 2015 Share Posted August 12, 2015 We cannot sanely refer to Patches as underpaid. Kids go to bed hungry in Canada and die of hunger elsewhere. I mean sure, if you live your life never understanding context. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
habs rule Posted August 12, 2015 Share Posted August 12, 2015 We cannot sanely refer to Patches as underpaid. Kids go to bed hungry in Canada and die of hunger elsewhere. I think that guy you like so much said something to the effect that there will always be poor. We can't reference a hockey players salary to all the bad things in the world. I mean compared to a garbage truck guy is he underpaid? The garbage truck guy works a hell of a lot harder. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DON Posted August 12, 2015 Share Posted August 12, 2015 But 200,000,000 other people could replace garbage-man that sanitation engineer. Maybe less than 500 could do Pacioretty's job. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
habs rule Posted August 13, 2015 Share Posted August 13, 2015 But 200,000,000 other people could replace garbage-man that sanitation engineer. Maybe less than 500 could do Pacioretty's job. And that my friend is the point. Underpaid? yep.In the world he lives in he definitely is. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toronthab Posted August 13, 2015 Share Posted August 13, 2015 The point IS to live one's life in context. The gross iniquities and injustices are not there magically. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toronthab Posted August 13, 2015 Share Posted August 13, 2015 Can't paste for some reason, but the guy I like so much..my confessor knows better.. based judgment on our treatment of the "last" as he called them. It really is an artificial market phenomenon and cultural artifact that we are discussing here in a real world. And the real world is just the world seen sanely. No one has a natural right to vastly more than they need no matter what the market or we sports fans think. The world's ills are not without causes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DON Posted August 13, 2015 Share Posted August 13, 2015 Reasoning v Passion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Machine of Loving Grace Posted August 13, 2015 Share Posted August 13, 2015 The point IS to live one's life in context. The gross iniquities and injustices are not there magically. Society likes to be entertained. Organized entertainment keeps society from murdering for sport (so instead we just maim for sport). It's not an injustice. It's economics. Society spends a lot of money on entertainment. Spending that money is why athletes make so much. There's a women's pro hockey league starting this fall with a minimum salary of $10,000 and average salary of $15,000 for the season. Why are they not making the money the men are? Because the NHL is a global institution with sponsors, TV deals and merchandise. People spend every day on it. And even then, NHL pales in comparison to Football across the world. Every day you goto a hockey website to post platitudes you're informing your computer cookies, which inform ad providers, which informs the league. You're just part of the cog. You know what's a grosser injustice than a bunch of farm kids making millions? The billionaires who own the teams convincing cities to spend public money on their arenas. The billionaires who make you care about the cost of social welfare and ignore corporate welfare. That's who you should care about. A couple young kids get money? Let them get their money. Focus on the old gods. Hockey players wouldn't make millions if there weren't people to spend billions collectively to watch them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toronthab Posted August 13, 2015 Share Posted August 13, 2015 :DHi MLG... I don't think we're in dispute concerning the reality of life in 21st century North America or the the culture of distraction and what it fosters. My point is a moral one. It rests on the proposition that life for a human being has a natural order including natural needs and that there is a natural foundation in the community from which new life emerges. We are products of community. We have as most of us at least dimly understand, natural rights. A right to garner to ourselves vast resources while others are impoverished by the same status quo just isn't one of them. We live in a consumer society, where people are more often referred to as "consumers" than persons. The western idea of human rights is rooted in the humanism of writers like Erasmus and Thomas Moore and is predicated in the idea that we have a God given nature; that we are ordered as rational animals with a spiritual core towards ends and purposes consistent with our nature. An appetite for food, eyes for seeing, intellects for knowing truth, consciences for willing the good etc. The basic idea of our duties to others is that we must not, to be realistic and rational, make it difficult or impossible for others to live out their natures as they have received them. Virtue is action in accord with a things nature. This is the basis for the objectivity of moral principles. How's 'bout dem Leefs? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Chicoutimi Cucumber Posted August 13, 2015 Share Posted August 13, 2015 Great post, Torontohab. I would add that the material inequalities under discussion are not 'natural.' They are permitted by the legal and political framework we have developed and sustain as an act of will. For much of the postwar era, top income earners had income tax rates of over 90%. The revenue thus garnered was used to support public programs of various sorts, including social programs that benefit the neediest. Now corporations and the wealthy are taxed at a fraction of what they used to be. These are choices we've made, collectively. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nihilz Posted August 13, 2015 Share Posted August 13, 2015 Baa Baa. What was that? I'm too immersed in pop culture pitfalls. Can you believe the same homeless guy asks me for money everyday!? I look forward to giving him a dirty scowl. I wish Ben Mulroney would get into politics. He's so charismatic & stylish. Like, baaa baaa. I've gone too long without watching a young girl twerking in jeans cut into a thong. What's that? I din't see that on facebook, it can't be true. Bro, sick rims! Indoctrination. Divide & conquer. Ignorance is bliss. Industrial military complex for the win! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Price (no relation) Posted August 13, 2015 Share Posted August 13, 2015 Can't paste for some reason, but the guy I like so much..my confessor knows better.. based judgment on our treatment of the "last" as he called them. It really is an artificial market phenomenon and cultural artifact that we are discussing here in a real world. And the real world is just the world seen sanely. No one has a natural right to vastly more than they need no matter what the market or we sports fans think. The world's ills are not without causes. No offense, Toronthab, but this is not really the point. It's not about rights. (I'm not going to touch on objectivity of moral principles - I don't believe that objective moral principles.) It's entirely about supply and demand. "Everything is worth what it's buyer is willing to pay for it." Including someone's services. I think even DON (who tried to make the same point I'm making) grossly overestimates how many people in the world could provide Les Canadiens with the same level of service that Max Pacioretty could. On the open market, as an unrestricted free agent, he'd command upwards of 8 million a year today, and be worth every penny -- because what he commands is something that is in demand with very, very limited supply. There are less than a dozen other people in the world who could provide what he provides to the same degree. And what he provides makes far more money to the team that he provides it to. The free market works. The free market is a good thing. The wealth divide is not a bad thing, in a free market society. It's not a zero sum game. The amount available for everyone goes up drastically in a free market. In an egalitarian society, everybody might make $10. In a free market society, instead of $10 the poorest makes $20 and the richest make $2000. If you try to divy that up equally among everyone, we all go back to making $10. The rich are much better off in a free market system, sure, but even the poor are much better off...just not as much as the rich. Equalizing wealth is generally just punishing everyone. So when a hockey player makes $9,000,000 a year...he's not overpaid, if he provides his team with more value than they're paying him in return. And he's not taking anything away from the less fortunate - that isn't money they could have if we got rid of the rich -- we'd all just be even more poor. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
habs rule Posted August 13, 2015 Share Posted August 13, 2015 :DHi MLG... I don't think we're in dispute concerning the reality of life in 21st century North America or the the culture of distraction and what it fosters. My point is a moral one. It rests on the proposition that life for a human being has a natural order including natural needs and that there is a natural foundation in the community from which new life emerges. We are products of community. We have as most of us at least dimly understand, natural rights. A right to garner to ourselves vast resources while others are impoverished by the same status quo just isn't one of them. We live in a consumer society, where people are more often referred to as "consumers" than persons. The western idea of human rights is rooted in the humanism of writers like Erasmus and Thomas Moore and is predicated in the idea that we have a God given nature; that we are ordered as rational animals with a spiritual core towards ends and purposes consistent with our nature. An appetite for food, eyes for seeing, intellects for knowing truth, consciences for willing the good etc. The basic idea of our duties to others is that we must not, to be realistic and rational, make it difficult or impossible for others to live out their natures as they have received them. Virtue is action in accord with a things nature. This is the basis for the objectivity of moral principles. How's 'bout dem Leefs? And you interest is in philosophy? Imagine that. Very articulate post TH. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toronthab Posted August 14, 2015 Share Posted August 14, 2015 Still can't use the quote function ChiCuke which I wanted to do responding to your post. Good point upon how social injustice is built into our "system". An "investor" is entitled to rewards and protections for his money that the working man who "invests" his whole life in his work cannot dream of. The "needs" of capital overwhelm all else.. we run factories 24/7 to maximize the return on capital investment but human beings are not designed to be night creatures as every shift worker knows. But mostly its the indifference, mine and that of others that perpetuates the pictures of emaciated children that rightly disturb us. My point is essentially (Aristotelian pun intended) to address the actual nature of existence.. or sanity .. as I like to call it, as is knowable in formal causes. In the form and matter consideration of reality, we are highly proficient at material and efficient causation, but are profoundly adrift in our very lives and self understanding from our actual natures. Our "form" or essence is the key to that intelligible nature of reality and purpose and our only true happiness, despite our tendencies to be ruled by the passions and "fan"aticism of the moment is in action our in accord with what we are; our actuality. Our end as intellectual moral free-wiled agents is to live that reality. HowsaboudemLeefs,eh? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toronthab Posted August 14, 2015 Share Posted August 14, 2015 Good posts all as we fritter away our time here in trivialities.. the nature of being and final causes..hahahaha . I like all the posts.. Don's Nihilz ... (interesting moniker!), Habs rule and Jeffs. New Acer tablet.. ironically.. and It's not doing quotes yet so forgive my less directed posts. A good defence of the case for free markets which I support incidentally, but not as ends in themselves and never if the action of the "free" market which I don't think exists or has ever, impinges upon the good of the human community which is its only possible moral justification or raison d'etre. So too I think Jeff.. and I'm no economist by the way .. we can agree on natural incentives and an opposition to state capitalism as Marxism has tended to practice it and its foundation in what I universally find a really dull witted materialism a philosophical worldview that (no offence intended) I find just stupid and incoherent. The system developed by Jean de Calvin.. capitalism.. is not a reason to live and neither does it provide a modus vivendi. The core of any discussion involving the shoulds and shouldn'ts of human life , or the statements of value implicit or articulated beneath them can only be the answer to the question "what is man?". And that is more a question of our formal cause, our formal nature and our destiny. So, I think the only rationally compelling ground for evaluation must be within the broad nature and purpose of being itself. Accordingly it may surprise no one (some of you may have suspected that I might be a catholic!!) that I find one of the most useful documents treating of the human condition and economics to have been penned by John Paul II , in Laborem Exercens, "On Human Work" which locates human rights and the subtleties and not so subtleties of human life and work within its existential framework. Canadian unions have used it as a source document in arguing for rights and positions I gather. I'll include a brief summary link if I can find one. Voila.. from an interesting source.. ...not pasting.. http:// distributistreview.com/mag/2010/09/jean-paul-ii/laborem-exercens/ (link typed in) But again, essentially, the virtues of the market based economy and respect for the principle of subsidiarity that Marxism ignores must find expression and justification in the health and wellbeing of the human community which is a communion, the communion from which we receive our being. In short , as CC and Don affirm particularly in defence of reason over passion; what distinguishes us from other animals significantly, and in the name of justice the sublime ordering principle of existence , transcending like beauty and goodness the merely material and as we experience it in natural law, our very nature, all economic means and measures must be situated within what I would argue is this divine milieu as Teilhard de Chardin expressed it so clearly. (Ya..grammar is not my strong suit.. ... sorry.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Price (no relation) Posted August 14, 2015 Share Posted August 14, 2015 ...the pictures of emaciated children that ... Are sad, but irrelevant to the salary of an NHL player. We can hardly affect the lives of people in another government and economic system more than we could affect the lives of people on another planet. The economics of the west are really only relevant to the west. If other countries want to benefit from our economic system, all they need to do is join it. Change to a western-style free market and the lives of their poor will in a few short decades resemble the lives of our poor - who aren't that poor at all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Price (no relation) Posted August 14, 2015 Share Posted August 14, 2015 So, I think the only rationally compelling ground for evaluation must be within the broad nature and purpose of being itself. I agree completely here. I think you'll disagree with my next bit, though. I am going to quote the words of the late great Carl Sagan, which for me are the most enlightening words I've ever read on the subject. “The significance of our lives and our fragile planet is then determined only by our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life's meaning ... If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal.” We are significantly off topic. Wanna head over to "The Lounge?" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toronthab Posted August 14, 2015 Share Posted August 14, 2015 Hi Jeff. With respect I differ. Our every thought changes the world as a simple ontological fact. The thought that we can do little in our local political philosophies and economies that would effect Indian or local poor is just false. Why not have more of our economic activity ordered towards the poorest? Is that not a worthier goal than aggravated consumption? And market improvements might well improve life in India.. I don't have any expertise there, but why not you and I creating a market for money to India? Why not make that the consumer item capitalism should at least partially direct itself towards? It comes down to values? What do we really value? With me its commonly less than noble and compassionate. Economic systems are only that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toronthab Posted August 14, 2015 Share Posted August 14, 2015 Hi..Jeff. We're on topic and in context methinks. Is Pacoretti underpaid? Not even remotely. As to " Sagan's quote, as appealing as it is rhetorically, it is self refuting on a few levels. First it completely begs the question. It's really just the ironic and self contradicting claim that there is no objective purpose or that if there were one, one could not know it and secondly that we must manufacture some objective purpose due to some irrational craving should we want one. Nowhere has anyone ever successfully established any of his prejudices by reason, but beyond this the self refutation is his assumed objective value behind his critique which rests ironically upon the supposition that we can indeed know the objective meaning of things which includes the denial of such knowledge and that arational cravings are bad things...value statements not available to subjectivists , and thirdly that his unstated objective standards that inform , or rather misinform his critique are not defensible. Blind meaningless matter in motion ..his reduction.. does not allow for the free will required to make free intellectual judgments as to the nature of judgment or value. Sagan is simply drawing out the implicit and in his case unrecognized implications of an incoherent materialism. It sounds pretty and has the odour of erudition, but its actually just an incoherent faith in mindlessness which has no basis in reason for the points mentioned. He, excellent physicist that he was fell victim to the tendency Einstein warned about , as did the late great Stanley Jaki who had to inform Hawking of the implications of Gödel's Incompleteness theorem for those who thought that a GUT or grand unified theory could somehow arrive at a deep understanding of reality; a metaphysical task. HowsaboudemLeefs,eh? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Price (no relation) Posted August 14, 2015 Share Posted August 14, 2015 Hi..Jeff. We're on topic and in context methinks. Is Pacoretti underpaid? Not even remotely. As to " Sagan's quote, as appealing as it is rhetorically, it is self refuting on a few levels. First it completely begs the question. It's really just the ironic and self contradicting claim that there is no objective purpose or that if there were one, one could not know it and secondly that we must manufacture some objective purpose due to some irrational craving should we want one. Nowhere has anyone ever successfully established any of his prejudices by reason, but beyond this the self refutation is his assumed objective value behind his critique which rests ironically upon the supposition that we can indeed know the objective meaning of things which includes the denial of such knowledge and that arational cravings are bad things...value statements not available to subjectivists , and thirdly that his unstated objective standards that inform , or rather misinform his critique are not defensible. Blind meaningless matter in motion ..his reduction.. does not allow for the free will required to make free intellectual judgments as to the nature of judgment or value. Sagan is simply drawing out the implicit and in his case unrecognized implications of an incoherent materialism. It sounds pretty and has the odour of erudition, but its actually just an incoherent faith in mindlessness which has no basis in reason for the points mentioned. He, excellent physicist that he was fell victim to the tendency Einstein warned about , as did the late great Stanley Jaki who had to inform Hawking of the implications of Gödel's Incompleteness theorem for those who thought that a GUT or grand unified theory could somehow arrive at a deep understanding of reality; a metaphysical task. HowsaboudemLeefs,eh? See, this is why we're off topic. I believe your post is logical based on the assumptions you (and so many others) are making, but we have to back up several steps because I do not take those assumptions for granted. (Those assumptions include the "objectivity" of any moral code, and the existence of "free will," and the validity or even existence of anything "metaphysical.") As such, we'd get into a discussion of religion and philosphy and science that, while it might ultimately have everything to do with the appropriate salary for Max Pacioretty, is quite beyond the intended scope of this thread. Hell (excuse the term), the appropriateness of a player's salary in the NHL, for the purposes of this thread, can be defined as "You have $70,000,000 you must spend entirely on 23+ players. Ensure every one of them receives compensation as a fraction of that $70,000,000 in proportion to their contribution to the team's ability to win over an 82 game season and playoffs." Max Pacioretty makes 6% of the team's available salary. I believe he contributes far more than 6% of the team's production and talent. Surely, by that definition, you can agree that Max Pacioretty is grossly underpaid. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
habs rule Posted August 14, 2015 Share Posted August 14, 2015 See, this is why we're off topic. I believe your post is logical based on the assumptions you (and so many others) are making, but we have to back up several steps because I do not take those assumptions for granted. (Those assumptions include the "objectivity" of any moral code, and the existence of "free will," and the validity or even existence of anything "metaphysical.") As such, we'd get into a discussion of religion and philosphy and science that, while it might ultimately have everything to do with the appropriate salary for Max Pacioretty, is quite beyond the intended scope of this thread. Hell (excuse the term), the appropriateness of a player's salary in the NHL, for the purposes of this thread, can be defined as "You have $70,000,000 you must spend entirely on 23+ players. Ensure every one of them receives compensation as a fraction of that $70,000,000 in proportion to their contribution to the team's ability to win over an 82 game season and playoffs." Max Pacioretty makes 6% of the team's available salary. I believe he contributes far more than 6% of the team's production and talent. Surely, by that definition, you can agree that Max Pacioretty is grossly underpaid. Ah ha I love it , cutting straight to the heart of the matter. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toronthab Posted August 15, 2015 Share Posted August 15, 2015 Nah.. A few points. The intent of the thread might well have not anticipated an actual treatment of the actual meaning of the words. words like " actual", or "should" or "too much" or "too little", or the notion of "injustice", etc, vis a vis a hockey player, but virtually, if not all human discourse inevitably carries this implicit load. That is why there were Platos and Aristotles and Aquinas and the near universal impulse to probe being and value itself. Point 1. It is impossible to coherently deny human free will. First you experience our limited ability to act fully and constantly in freedom of act, but we always have its potential. As far as Patch's salary is concerned, there is no evidence anywhere in modern science or philosophy of mind or action anywhere indicating that we don't have free will ...indeed materialism is falling down against this bulkhead (e.g.Thomas Nagle's latest book on conscioiusness) . But for our purposes, if you don't have free will Jeff, then you are not free to judge whether you have free will or not. And every culture in human history ..every legal system, every code of behavior..like the ones you implicitly demand that I follow here, is radically incoherent. You'd have to stop saying "should".. or "try to", etc. This is what incoherence means. Point 2. I assume free will ..like you do alright.. but my assumption is in this argument. Like the existence of objective moral values, this is not something I just "assumed" or donned (hi Don) uncritically or to satisfy a Saganian itch. Sagan is frankly not a good thinker at all outside the area, physics, of his expertise, and he may find his smooth sounding, superficially plausible incoherent faith statements.. all predicated on the musings of William of Ockham, David Hume and Bertrand Russell (who denied the existence of the universe and himself as well as causality itself....by the way) but as I showed above, its incoherent... false. Objective values, to exist as objective values as our actual nature affirms them.. yours too , but unrecognized.. are rooted in natural law, which is to say that the the natural law IS us. The basic axiom of moral discussion, a practical discipline asking what we "should" do as mankind rationally does and irrationally ignores, is that "Good should be done and evil avoided". There is no coherent rebuttal to this proposition that does not at least implicitly employ it. As Aquinas often said of such skepticism, if a person really believed that he should logically be silent for to even speak or argue refutes himself. Objective moral values derive from our very being whether we like it or not. Yours too. We just tend not to recognize the forest. Thirdly; I don't think that those who look for intelligibility and particularly in the west those who like us employ Aristotle's fourfold schema describing what we call "change" are just assuming anything. Quite the contrary. Except for making some disasterous mistakes in reasoning..or thought itself, its actually quite easy to prove a moral , intellectual Mind and consciousness in the universe as we find even in quantum mechanics and as Einstein thought. The classic proofs for the truth of theism based upon the nature of reality and change..from which we get the terms actual and potential, are still good proofs , rendering a foundation for objective human rights in the Pure Act which is an entity determined as necessary to explain change and identifiable with the God of western theism. Robert Barron is very good on such proofs from reason. My point though for our purposes is that like a great many, human reason using its in-form-ation .. the "form" necessary to explain the possibility of universals like words as in "ball" or "philosophical discussion" is the path of intelligibility itself leading to reality. One doesn't.. indeed shouldn't .. just assume anything at all. Point 4.. So HowsabouddemLeefs, eh?!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Chicoutimi Cucumber Posted August 15, 2015 Share Posted August 15, 2015 How about this. In terms relative to the peculiar context within which he operates, Pacioretty is obviously massively underpaid. In 'absolute' or objective terms - that's to say, in terms of an 'objective' theory of distributive justice that we might choose to endorse - Pacioretty is massively overpaid. So are most of us. I love Torontohab's Catholic preoccupation with Aristotle, but we don't necessarily need all that ontological baggage. John Rawls suggested that the most just economic order would be in one in which the worst off member of society is better off than they would be under any other system (the 'difference' principle). Generally this is extrapolated in defence of a more redistributive society than one in which hockey players make $10 mil per year while others eat out of dumpsters. But if we extend it to cover the entire planet, then the existing order becomes indisputably and transparently unjust. It's tricky business, though. We all live our lives within particular social contexts, and apart from a few activists, almost all of us accept that context as a fixed reality, adjustable only at the margins. E.g., I advocate a more redistributive society - the Scandinavian social democracies outperform Canada on almost every indicator of well-being you can name - and that's an achievable aim. But redesigning the entire global economic system so as to make the masses of miserable, suffering human beings better off? It's hard to even think about. And unlike building a fairer society, it has little precedent in historical experience. So I certainly don't blame anyone for trying to get a raise in the current system. It's not incumbent upon us, as individuals, to be self-sacrificing saints in a context in which no one else is doing the same. And anyone claiming the contrary is a hypocrite, unless they are turning over a huge percentage of their income to global charities. It's a collective action problem, that (like global warming) will take collective solutions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toronthab Posted August 15, 2015 Share Posted August 15, 2015 Good post ChiCuke. I certainly don't give great percentages of my income to further the requirements of justice and we do of course parse reality according to the surrounding ethos, but there is something particularly nagging and unjust, injustice on stilts as it were about considering a 2 million a year man as suffering injustice, and with respect if its broke, fix it. Justice is a tough project alright, but part of it at least is the critique of the status quo and so such paradigms should always be acceptable frameworks for discussion since in fact their absence is part of the problem itself to be addressed. This just assumes that human justice is important. Prophets are usually stoned of course. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
habs rule Posted August 15, 2015 Share Posted August 15, 2015 Good post ChiCuke. I certainly don't give great percentages of my income to further the requirements of justice and we do of course parse reality according to the surrounding ethos, but there is something particularly nagging and unjust, injustice on stilts as it were about considering a 2 million a year man as suffering injustice, and with respect if its broke, fix it. Justice is a tough project alright, but part of it at least is the critique of the status quo and so such paradigms should always be acceptable frameworks for discussion since in fact their absence is part of the problem itself to be addressed. This just assumes that human justice is important. Prophets are usually stoned of course. Uhh actually TH the thread is about whether Patches is the most underrated player in the NHL, the underpaid part and subsequent discussions actually have very little to do with what the thread was about. Way off topic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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