(10-20-2017, 03:13 AM)Galen Wrote: Yes, but the conditions Nomads have to deal virtually guarantee that anyone with in IQ above room temperature is going to get good at it. If an Xer didn't then very bad things tended to happen and would continue until they learned or ended up dead or worse.
I never really did believe in the labor theory of value because the conclusions it implies tend to lead to paradox which is a sure sign that a theory is almost certainly wrong. AGW predictions never seem to come true and the powers that be were trying to panic everyone into their already prepared solutions which is about as clear of a sign you can get that a scam is in the works.
Nomads at their worst sell out cheaply to bad people. So it was with Lost fascists and, just as evil, Stalinist functionaries. Integrity and freedom are worth great sacrifices in keeping. The best Nomads know the Abyss and find it the scariest phenomenon of all -- even scarier than Death itself.
The crude representation of labor theory of value brings about the failure to recognize that (1) small-scale enterprise is often to a large extent labor, and that profits from owner-operation of small business are largely a reasonable return to effort, (2) labor value can vary greatly from one worker to another based upon skill or sacrifice -- that the work of an unspecialized laborer is not worth as much as that of a skilled worker, and that such dangerous activities as mining and logging need incentives to get people to do such work, and (3) much that makes life truly fulfilling requires a sort of cultural or academic aristocracy. If one thinks of music, the Soviet system did produce the likes of Igor Oistrach, Emil Gilels, and Mstislav Rostropovich who got recognized very often as the greatest violinist, pianist, and cellist of their times. Sure, such people represent supreme talent; but they also blow away the Marxist labor theory of value.
But let us remember: the only means of survival of most people is their toil. Denial of the value of labor is the debasement of the worker into a serf at best. Even in the old slave system the masters recognized the value of a 'prime field hand'. Of course the 'prime field hand' was not to enjoy the fruits of his toil. To deny the value of labor is to establish that ownership and bureaucratic power are the sole measures of merit, and that ownership and bureaucratic power are the means of denying everything beyond an animal level of existence to people who have only their toil to offer. In an order in which ownership and bureaucratic power are the sole measures of human merit, no human suffering can ever be in excess so long as owners and power-wielders get what they want. Everything. If the elites do not simply sweat workers with long hours of hard labor under brutal management for bare sustenance, then they will squeeze the petit-bourgeoisie into a proletariat and gouge the not-so-well-connected professionals with gigantic rents and taxes (the latter to enforce the will of the elite and support wars for profit and colonial adventures).
Oh, by the way -- most Nomads have no hostility to mainstream science, as mainstream science is fully compatible with Nomad rationalism.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.