Do We Work Too Hard?

[SheetWise]

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That certainly contributed to it significantly but in the case of Hungary at least (can't speak for other countries), there is a 500+ year history of always being ruled by outsiders. The people have gotten used to the "mouse" role in the cat and mouse game and so there is a culture of pretending to work to satisfy the rulers while cleverly wiggling out free time for themselves. It's so deeply ingrained in the people that they are not even aware of it.

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Thank you for that post.

[Peter666]

I can't imagine having a society without government. The question is how far do you let things go in a free society? Saying just don't kill or defraud anybody else is really not good enough. Eventually the most powerful person in this free society will take control of it. Having an overlord is inevitable.

And giving people the free decision to do what they want leads to conflicts of interest. Hence you have democracy where the majority rules. The minority will always be dissatisfied. In this situation, it would be good to have an overlord whose only interest was the common good.

[tylerdurden]

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Saying just don't kill or defraud anybody else is really not good enough. Eventually the most powerful person in this free society will take control of it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Why doesn't the most powerful person take control of a state-dominated country?

In a stateless system, there are two things that prevent this:

1) He's less powerful than everyone else put together.

2) Warlording is unprofitable.

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And giving people the free decision to do what they want leads to conflicts of interest.

[/ QUOTE ]

Explain.

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Hence you have democracy where the majority rules. The minority will always be dissatisfied.

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So someone must always be oppressed in your opinion?

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In this situation, it would be good to have an overlord whose only interest was the common good.

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HA HA HA HA HA... oh, you're serious?

[Cyrus]

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In the case of Hungary ... there is a 500+ year history of always being ruled by outsiders.

[/ QUOTE ]
Since Vajk became King Stephen around the year 1000, the Magyars have been fighting foreign invaders! If anything, Hungary has always been a nation under fire and its citizens have known little peace. They were always fighting - against the Byzantine imperial armies and then the Turks. Before them, the Mongol Tartars clashed with the Hungarians who put a stop to the easterners' advance towards Europe.


The Turks occupied eastern Hungary for more than 150 years. The Austrians kept the rest, except for eastern Transylvanian (now Rumania's). But the Magyars were always rebelling against the Austrians, until the middle of the 19th century when a double-centred monarchy was set up with seats in Vienna and Pest-Buda. Th Austro-Hungarian Empire was a glorious era for Mittel Europa and, of course, Hungary!

Such a predicament is supposed to breed men who fight and are individually strong. If you are looking for a reason that the Hungarians (speakers, by the way, of a rather "unique" language, that has no relation to any other European language whatsoever!) are "lazy" and whatnot, you better look elsewhere.

Because I know that (a) the Albanians who have been mostly servants to foreign rulers, and knew nothing about national identity until have been the most formidable capitalists within the socialist camp of Eeastern Europe, and were the first to break out of the communist model as well.

There is little ground grounds for your argument. And you're getting SheetWise all excited.

[wiseheart]

Yeah thats a great post...
I look around and see lazy gossipers in hungary
so we must not work as hard...

You can give your opinion all day, but until you back it
up with facts, it is just an opinion.

I suppose you would take it as fact if I said all
the players at P*'s were lazy donks who give all their
money away? Of course, I could be talking about
the .5/.10 games (what you see around you) but it
doesnt make the statement true for the whole site,
just as what you see around you is not true for a
whole country. (And I have been to Hungary, have
you actually been to the US so you have a basis for
your hard work judgement?)

That said, the immigrants in the USA do mostly work
their butts off, and they are not reported in most studies.

[Darryl_P]

You replied to Roy Munson but it sounds like you're talking to me...

I don't think there are many people in the world more qualified about this subject than I since I spent nearly equal amounts of time in both "worlds". OK I only grew up in Canada and not the USA, but I have visited more than half of your states and Canadians are pretty well aware of American culture (unlike the other way around).

For a number of years I represented the typical American view that communism is the root cause of being economically behind and now that people are free we need to teach them what to do with the freedom etc. etc. blah blah blah, but after a while I had to realize that the roots go much deeper indeed and much farther back in history. Maybe 30-50% of this country are potentially good American puppets who have various reasons for wanting to erase history, but the others (who have higher avg. IQs and education levels) have no intention of ever "catching up" simply because they do not consider the American dream a desirable state.

Note that while I did say they were lazier and worked less, I never said that they weren't right in being the way they are.

[Darryl_P]

It's true the Magyars (Hungarians) did fight each time, but they always lost! And so they needed a way to keep their dignity so they developed a wonderful way to make the rulers feel welcome yet find little loopholes to steal whatever commodities like time and material goods they could get away with.

Even in the glorious days of the Austro-Hungarian empire, the Austrians always regarded themselves as the superior group of the two, and the stats of conflicts between the two show that they're right.

[Peter666]

I don't know why you would mock the idea of a leader whose sole focus was the common good. This was always the concept behind an ideal monarch, and monarchy was always the natural culmination of most societies.

[Peter666]

One's values will dictate the type of market they wish. Liberals will want a totally free market with no moral standards or just minimal ones, while those who profess a certain religion will want their views to be integrated into the market system.

For example, Christians would want all non essential services to be closed on a Sunday. Liberals would advocate letting the individual owner decide.

[tylerdurden]

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I don't know why you would mock the idea of a leader whose sole focus was the common good. This was always the concept behind an ideal monarch, and monarchy was always the natural culmination of most societies.

[/ QUOTE ]

Let's assume (and this is a HUGE assumption) you can actually find an uncorruptable enlightened autocrat. You still have the problem of this single person defining the "common good" for everyone, even though it's highly likely that many people will disagree.

If a bunch of people want to get together and appoint an autocrat to run their lives, that's fine. It's NOT fine once that person gets authority over anyone that did not voluntarily enter into the arrangement.

BTW, that this state is the "natural culmination of most societies" (even if that were true) is not a very convincing argument. Most societies are based on coercion and oppression, so the natural culmination of such a system is not automatically desirable.