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A poll:Follow

#1 Dec 17 2009 at 5:46 AM Rating: Excellent
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Question text
money, while important, is exclusively a "means" rather than an "end" in itself :37 (77.1%)
money is an end in itself:4 (8.3%)
taxation is theft:1 (2.1%)
I have read The Golden Age:6 (12.5%)
Total:48
#2 Dec 17 2009 at 5:53 AM Rating: Good
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Yes.
#3 Dec 17 2009 at 5:54 AM Rating: Excellent
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The second option is about as sensical as "a fluent goose mouse the sky next a fat rodent"
#4 Dec 17 2009 at 5:56 AM Rating: Good
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Pensive the Ludicrous wrote:
The second option is about as sensical as "a fluent goose mouse the sky next a fat rodent"
We all know at least one person will choose it.
#5 Dec 17 2009 at 6:01 AM Rating: Good
You have to be pretty retarded to think that money is anything other than a means to an end.
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#6 Dec 17 2009 at 6:03 AM Rating: Decent
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Sweetums wrote:
Pensive the Ludicrous wrote:
The second option is about as sensical as "a fluent goose mouse the sky next a fat rodent"
We all know at least one person will choose it.


They's just trollin'
#7 Dec 17 2009 at 6:10 AM Rating: Good
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I have read the Golden Age. Of comics.
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#8 Dec 17 2009 at 6:11 AM Rating: Good
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Perhaps I should have said "Having money is an end in itself"?

OR:

"Having a stash of money is an end in itself"?

Are either of these two questions different from "Money is an end in itself"?
#9 Dec 17 2009 at 6:16 AM Rating: Decent
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Aripyanfar wrote:
Are either of these two questions different from "Money is an end in itself"?


They are different in syntax and in fairly quibbling semantic detail, which I could bicker with myself over, but no, they aren't really different at all practically.
#10 Dec 17 2009 at 6:28 AM Rating: Good
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I saw no option for donuts.

Fail.
#11 Dec 17 2009 at 6:30 AM Rating: Decent
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Nadenu wrote:
I saw no option for donuts.

Fail.


Donuts would be the end, and therefore money would be the means for them! Ergo; the first option!
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#12 Dec 17 2009 at 6:37 AM Rating: Good
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Aripyanfar wrote:
Perhaps I should have said "Having money is an end in itself"?

OR:

"Having a stash of money is an end in itself"?

Are either of these two questions different from "Money is an end in itself"?
I understood what you meant, even if the others are too retarded to, which is why I picked it.
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#13 Dec 17 2009 at 6:45 AM Rating: Decent
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Quote:
I understood what you meant, even if the others are too retarded to, which is why I picked it.


You'd still be wrong in thinking that having money is an end in itself.

It's possibly the most ludicrous ethical end phrasable in English, and impossible to actually believe if you spend five seconds thinking about what "end" means.
#14 Dec 17 2009 at 6:46 AM Rating: Good
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Uglysasquatch, Mercenary Major wrote:
Aripyanfar wrote:
Perhaps I should have said "Having money is an end in itself"?

OR:

"Having a stash of money is an end in itself"?

Are either of these two questions different from "Money is an end in itself"?
I understood what you meant, even if the others are too retarded to, which is why I picked it.

Even Christmas Stich won't get you out of this one. ^-^
#15 Dec 17 2009 at 6:56 AM Rating: Good
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Pensive the Ludicrous wrote:
Quote:
I understood what you meant, even if the others are too retarded to, which is why I picked it.


You'd still be wrong in thinking that having money is an end in itself.

It's possibly the most ludicrous ethical end phrasable in English, and impossible to actually believe if you spend five seconds thinking about what "end" means.
Just because you can't grasp the concept, doesn't mean it isn't there. Your inability to understand it is your problem, not mine.
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#16 Dec 17 2009 at 7:10 AM Rating: Good
I dunno. Some Scrooge McDuck types are happier simply HAVING a big pile of money than they are actually doing anything with it. Granted, this probably happens only at the highest end of the earning scale where people can have their basic needs taken care of by living off the interest.

For the other 99%, it is a means to an end.
#17 Dec 17 2009 at 7:50 AM Rating: Decent
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Just because you can't grasp the concept, doesn't mean it isn't there.


Of course not, that's a stupid reason.

The much better reason is that it's not a concept which can be grasped, and that you're fooling yourself through means of doublethink and delusions of logic into thinking that it is intelligible. This is not something which is debatable assuming you are attempting to speak english and communicate information to other people. A very likely reason you are confused about this is that haven't bothered to think about proximate and ultimate causes and values, or ordered them into an understanding of what "end in itself" actually means.

Then again, maybe you're sincere. The conditions of that though make you out to be a total idiot, so I refuse to believe it. If you believe that your corpse having a legal ownership of something which is totally imaginary is good in and of itself (and you are implying that you do,) then I have no words for you but pity.

Quote:
Some Scrooge McDuck types are happier simply HAVING a big pile of money than they are actually doing anything with it.


They don't have money. They have worthless scraps of paper or worthless scraps of metal. If you don't spend money it's worthless in at least three different fields of axiology.

Edited, Dec 17th 2009 8:56am by Pensive
#18 Dec 17 2009 at 8:43 AM Rating: Excellent
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Your inability to comprehend my motivation, makes me the idiot? I like how that works, can I use that sometime?
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#19 Dec 17 2009 at 9:51 AM Rating: Good
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Money can be an end for people, I find it strange that you don't understand that, it's fairly basic.
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#20 Dec 17 2009 at 10:18 AM Rating: Good
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catwho wrote:
I dunno. Some Scrooge McDuck types are happier simply HAVING a big pile of money than they are actually doing anything with it. Granted, this probably happens only at the highest end of the earning scale where people can have their basic needs taken care of by living off the interest.


I wish I could be part of this group.

Edited, Dec 17th 2009 9:22am by Iamadam
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#21 Dec 17 2009 at 10:55 AM Rating: Decent
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Pensive the Ludicrous wrote:
Quote:
Some Scrooge McDuck types are happier simply HAVING a big pile of money than they are actually doing anything with it.


They don't have money. They have worthless scraps of paper or worthless scraps of metal. If you don't spend money it's worthless in at least three different fields of axiology.

It is entirely possible that your definition of "worthless" is very different from theirs. You of all people should know that there can't be any definite fact on this subject.
#22 Dec 17 2009 at 11:14 AM Rating: Good
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Relevant Music Video.
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#23 Dec 17 2009 at 11:28 AM Rating: Decent
Substitute the word "money" with the broader term "wealth" and Pensive's whole argument goes away. If I own some property, that may be an end for me ("I'd love to have a nice little piece of land out in the country..."). You could also say I have "money", since that land has a value that is counted toward my net worth.
#24 Dec 17 2009 at 11:35 AM Rating: Excellent
BrownDuck wrote:
Substitute the word "money" with the broader term "wealth" and Pensive's whole argument goes away. If I own some property, that may be an end for me ("I'd love to have a nice little piece of land out in the country..."). You could also say I have "money", since that land has a value that is counted toward my net worth.


But money and wealth, on a very basic level, are two different things, and money is the means to wealth, not the end.

I think I understand what Pensive is saying. Having a ton of money does make some people happy, even if they don't spend it. But it's not actually having the money that makes them happy, it's knowing that they want for nothing. It's knowing that, if something were to happen, they could spend some of that money and it wouldn't hurt them or their lifestyle. It's not the money that is the end for them, it's the security of knowing they can spend that money any time, anywhere, for practically anything. And that really just turns it into a means, and not an end.

Having said all that, I'm not sure I entirely agree with it.
#25 Dec 17 2009 at 12:29 PM Rating: Excellent
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Resources are not an end.
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#26 Dec 17 2009 at 12:37 PM Rating: Good
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Quote:
Money can be an end for people, I find it strange that you don't understand that, it's fairly basic.


There is nothing to understand. The assertion itself is vacuous, and derives entirely from a misapprehension of what an end is, currency is, or both. Money simply is and can be nothing but a means to obtaining some sort of higher good. That's the entire point of it; if it's not a means then it's more impotent than varus in a brothel with only women hookers and no longer has a value.

It shouldn't be hard to disprove this if the notion is so basic. Provide an example wherein money is the telos of life and you have an end. You simply can't do it. If you find a scrooge mcduck who sits on a pile of cash until he dies and has it burnt at his death, he's not valuing money as an end, because he's never considering using it and the using it is what makes it the money. He's valuing paper as an end; one might say that he likes trees more than cash. If he spends it it's no longer an end.

Pretty simple right? Save it and it's not money, spend it and it's not an end. There isn't a third option.

Quote:
Substitute the word "money" with the broader term "wealth" and Pensive's whole argument goes away.


Good thing it's not a question of some nebulous "wealth," and that every part of your post is instantly irrelevant to that question, huh?

Quote:
It is entirely possible that your definition of "worthless" is very different from theirs.


You should learn to interpret conditions of judgments. Money isn't categorically worthless; it is worthless in the condition of that particular case, and it's not by my standard of worth. It's by scrooges own petard.

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I'm also kind of chuffed that I got about 4 denials of the thesis when the poll is so unequivocally in agreement with me. I never knew I could troll like that, like it makes me wanna go get a peach milkshake and chill out with a book or something.

Edited, Dec 17th 2009 1:44pm by Pensive
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