Capitalism

Capitalism causes prosperity, e.g. USA, England, Europe. Communism causes mass starvation (USSR in the 1920-'s and 1930's ) and mass murder. Example Venezuela.
Steven Dutch: Correlation, in and of itself, doesn't prove causation. But correlation, coupled with a reasonable causal explanation, does constitute strong evidence of causation.


Working class people work, and they worked hard to get what they have. So they don't want it threatened. They don't want criminals in their neighborhoods and they don't want the value of their homes threatened. And they're smart enough to realize that if you can take down the wealthy and the powerful, you can squash working class people like a bug. So many of them don't buy into the "soak the rich" philosophy because they know perfectly well who will be next to get soaked.


Leftists: buy a clue. We are not going to seize the wealth of the top 10% of the population and pass it out among everybody else. First, it wouldn't go all that far. Second, once it was spent, there would be no more. See Chile, 1974 for additional information, or take notes during Zimbabwe 2007-. We are not going to cure poverty by printing a million dollars for everybody. See Germany, 1923 for details. 

Politics and Philosophy seem to have a dividing line between them. If you take the top philosophers their ideas about politics seem not so great. Hegel, Kant, Leonard Nelson. Even John Locke came after the Glorious Revolution in order to justify it.

While the system of the USA Constitution and the Limited Monarchy in England seem to be the results of circumstances and not any well thought out system. The whole idea of having a Parliament was because Edward I needed money from the lords. Money that he did not have a right to under the  feudal system. So he had to come up with Parliament so he could get their money with representation. And later the  reason for the House of Commons was the same. The Magna Carta same as just being a way to stop the king from getting as much as he wanted from the nobles.
I could go on, but the idea seems the same. Whatever really works in politics is never the result of some well thought out policy but the result of circumstances and later is found to be working well.

I noticed Leonard Nelson on the Friesian web site of Dr Kelley Ross. But for some reason it was ignored by most of academia. My learning partner David Bronson asked me about that. I said well it makes sense because the top philosophers are not at the Ivy League places, Ed Feser after all is in Pasadena. Michael Huemer in Colorado.
For some odd reason the people of philosophy at the Ivy League schools are mediocre or less.

[it is like Allan Bloom said about the drastic decline and fall of the universities--but specifically pointing out the-social studies and humanities as being less than worthless but of actual negative value.] 

If you take the Gra at his word, then the main problem that people have is lack of trust in God. After all, take the principle "as much as you trust in God, that is how much he helps you" then the problem is not how to get help. It is rather to get trust.

Sometimes you notice that people that are against the path of learning fast of Rav Nahman of Uman are not in fact doing so much learning. On one hand the idea of learning in depth is important. But often the same people that learn the deepest are also the same ones that learn very fast as separate sessions.

As if you consider what the Gra said that one has an obligation to get through the Oral and Written Law [the two Talmuds, Sifra, Sifrei, Michilta, the Midrash Raba, Tosephta.] at least once it seems that that would be difficult without this idea of Rav Nahman of learning as  fast as possible [i.e saying the words in order and going on until the end of the book and then review.].
And if you take into account the obligation of doing Physics and Metaphysics also as  the rishonim [medieval authorities] that went along with this basic approach of Saadia Gaon, then all the more so that the path of learning fast is the only possible way. [That is Ibn Pakuda of the Obligations of the Heart, Benjamin the Doctor, and the Rambam and others.]
[The most open about Metaphysics and Physics was Ibn Pakuda right on the first page of the Obligations of the Hearts. Later in the third chapter of Shaar HaBehina for Physics]


[It is not that in depth is not important. It is just that I am saying that experience showed that 1/2 of learning time ought to be in depth and the other half for going fast. This is in every Litvak yeshiva. The morning is for in depth. The afternoon for fast learning.]

It is the same with coffee. Those against it you notice are not anything like super-achievers. Rather it is just they do not want anyone else to be an achiever and thus to show them up. 

Bach