[ExI] video games take 2 (Tara Maya)

BillK pharos at gmail.com
Sat Aug 12 23:32:31 UTC 2017


On 12 August 2017 at 21:00, spike  wrote:
> So it's genetic.  Now criticism of capitalism is racism.  Cool!
>
> Oh I love that kind of talk.  I find the term "buttloads of money" most
> titillating.  We should have a specific term for getting turned on by merely
> visualizing big curvaceous voluptuous piles of money.  We could make sexbots
> who utter comments such as: Hey you big handsome carbon unit, I have some
> bedroom moves you will find most profitillating.
>
> Such as that.  And Dr. Jill Stein's looks.  Oh we will make a buttload of
> money.  Pardon me, I need to... uh... take a shower...
>


Sorry, but I'm afraid I have to disagree.

Clark is an economist - not a geneticist. He has thought of a
biological theory without any biology. When he says 'genes did it',
he's just making it up out of his imagination. There is no evidence
that genetics had anything to do with the Protestant work ethic. The
Protestant Reformation and other institutional changes are far more
likely causes. i.e.'memes' not 'genes'.

The rich are likely to be enthusiastic about the idea that they have
'better' genes than the miserable peasants. But what they really have
is inherited wealth and power that gives them access to better food,
better health, better education and contacts with other rich people in
positions of power.

Clark researched wills at a time when the poor were mostly not even
registering births and deaths. And they didn't have any property
requiring making a will. The poor were having very large families
(just like the third world nowadays) because they knew many children
would die. Even when a third of the children died, the undocumented
poor still had more surviving children than the rich. And there were
far more poor families than rich families.

I think you will find that nowadays after all the criticism his theory
received even Clark himself is placing a lot less emphasis on the
'genes' side of his theory.


BillK



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