It's not genuine scarcity if it can be produced in abundance. If it's a truly rare mineral, then it only has aesthetic "value" in a system without money and the profit motive.

I didn't say it was genuine scarcity. But it is *relative* scarcity compared to other goods which are more available in the same place and time.

And, Dissident, wtf? All value is "only" aesthetic value.

Yet a replacement substance may be easily manufactured in a system without fiscal concerns. 

Alchemical gold, I suppose. Because the properties of gold which make it suitable for space suits aren't common or easy to replicate.

However, the common salient features of capitalism were still there: production with a price tag, class divisions, a wage system, the requirement of currency, top-to-bottom control in favor of a privileged few. A variation, yes, but hardly completely different IMO. If you wanted something, you had to pay for it, which is the main feature of capitalism. 

If you see symptoms and don't understand aetiologies, of course it looks the same. A cold from exposure to rain, an allergic difficulty to breathe, an infectious pneumonia or tuberculosis, and emphysema from long term smoking will all look the same to you. Soviet class divisions obeyed a different dynamic than they do in kapitalistic and other systems. And prices, wages and currency did not serve, as they do in kapitalism, the purpose of finding the most efficient resource assignment. The honesty of prices is pretty basic to a free market. This is why every price distortion makes the market less efficient (price controls for the supply, minimum wages for the demand, and taxes, inflation and subsidies for both). Prices in the Soviet Union (*and* wages) were never intended to be honest. "If you wanted something, you had to pay for it" sure, but you had to pay a price set by decree, not supply and demand, which to the producer may or may not cover the production costs; and again, if you were out of the production quotas, then no amount of additional money was getting you the item (unlike in kapitalism), well, at least not outside the black market.

I think a few notable injuries would soon convince them to vote otherwise.

To this day, people continue to drive drunk.

Or unless that particular dangerous task was fully automated to avoid worker injuries. 

Wait! On most of the other posts you have decried automation, in some pretty explicitly. So, which is it?

As opposed to the less profitable measures of finding a non-polluting alternative energy source. 

Waste, and dangerous waste in particular, depends on what is being done, not on how it's powered.

You're arguing a point that has many extreme "what if?" scenarios to make your point, and which is irrelevant to my point:

No, the extreme what if is the existence of the family wealth making the baby rich from birth.

Either is bad, and I think you know what I meant.

Yes, to deny that a small improvement is an improvement at all.

I never said it was a sufficient improvement. All I said, and defend, was that it is an improvement. You are the one saying it's indistinguishable from nothing having happened.

Which overlooks the fact that everyone in the world could have a full life under a more advanced economic system modern technology makes possible

I'm not overlooking anything. I'm just realizing that if you want to go from A to Z, you have to pass through B, C, D... it's you who wants an instant jump.

The point is, a few can have 100 without straining their income, and a huge number of people can barely afford one that is frequently breaking down. 

I care that the guys who can't now afford one, become able to afford one.

I don't care if another guy can afford 100. And I don't even see why I should care.

I care about well being, but I truly don't give a damn about inequality.

Ironically I used to, when I was young and sheltered in a firmly middle class world and a quite liberal school. It is when I have known more people, known more situations, known more social groups, and yes, known more poor people, that I stopped caring about inequality. To improve their well being has absolutely no bearing on how rich the richest members of society are. (Well at least those who are rich in the private sector; rich bureaucrats will have to be impoverished and hanged by their intestines). They're poor because they don't have things; not because others have them.

When there is such a huge disparity between the haves and have-nots, there certainly is such a correlation.

It is intuitive, but it is just false.

This is why European First World nations are less tolerant of the disparity between the rich and poor than Americans are, because they lack the rich-worshiping ideology and contempt of the poor that Americans are notorious for having.

This is exactly the kind of thing I was aiming at. The Anglosphere is all more unequal than the Continental countries.

I don't think it's about ideology (although the role of the separation of religion from the state looks interesting...) though. I think it's because the Anglosphere (barring the British Isles themselves) are immigrant societies, whose culture is marked by the frontier character and by being small owners since forever. Continental countries on the other hand, are all fully settled and some even crowded since forever and for most of their history were subject to ownership arrangements which favored the poor not owning anything and the rich having to provide for the poor in their responsibility.

Btw, did you notice you're less frustrated with me today over this topic than you were yesterday? 

Am I?

I'm not frustrated with *you*.

I'm frustrated that there are people who can't accept settled science. That the socialist narrative is so strong it can survive all evidence against it.







Cuteness is to die for
Cuteness cannot fail
Cuteness knows no limit
Cuteness will prevail