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[Helgoland]

Academical, as far as I can tell.

Besides, a business is not there to make profits by providing a service. Sure, that's what plenty of people start them for; I do not like or agree with those people. Not the purpose of a business. Greed should not be the primary motivating factor in any given endeavour. A business is there to provide a service, and making profit allows them to continue doing so.

Corporate executives do not need five yachts or some bullshit.

What about lil mom&pop stores? Or start-ups? Or even street vendors? You simplify things way too much by saying that wanting to make money == greed.

[scriver]

And you're trying to derail the argument over semantics.

[Helgoland]

It's not just semantics, there's an actual difference!
The primary motivation of practically everyone who goes into business is to make money. And as long as that business doesn't do any harm, they should be allowed to run it. Greed, I'd argue, is present if they start harming people to make money, for example by pushing gender stereotypes to increase their profits. If they just serve an existing demand, it's just sound business practice.
TL;DR: Societal change can't come from businesses, because that's not what businesses do. The only moral requirement we can make of businesses is not to harm people.

[scrdest]

It's not just semantics, there's an actual difference!
The primary motivation of practically everyone who goes into business is to make money. And as long as that business doesn't do any harm, they should be allowed to run it. Greed, I'd argue, is present if they start harming people to make money, for example by pushing gender stereotypes to increase their profits. If they just serve an existing demand, it's just sound busimess practice.
TL;DR: Societal change can't come from businesses, because that's not what businesses do. The only moral requirement we can make of businesses is not to harm people.

It's semantics. You just smuggled an actual argument in your own definition, but we're talking about the same thing, just using different phrasing.

[Willfor]

@ Helgoland: Well, I'll leave the actual debate to other people, and I will tackle this derail.

Just over one hundred years ago we didn't demand that they not harm people. In fact, we still don't really demand that they don't harm people enough today. And when you say that "The only moral requirement we can make of businesses is not to harm people" you are in essence directly saying that you don't believe the argument that this is harmful to people.

Do you deny that businesses are harming people today? What evidence do you have that the issues that they've brought up are not harmful?

[Helgoland]

It's semantics. You just smuggled an actual argument in your own definition, but we're talking about the same thing, just using different phrasing.

Okay, I'm confused - yeah, that greed bit was semantics, but the definition of greed is not the issue here, right? It's about what businesses are for.
Willfor,

And when you say that "The only moral requirement we can make of businesses is not to harm people" you are in essence directly saying that you don't believe the argument that this is harmful to people.

what does the highlighted 'this' refer to? The argument? Or the current overly lax regulations?

Do you deny that businesses are harming people today? What evidence do you have that the issues that they've brought up are not harmful?

Nope, businesses are harming a whole lot of people all around the world - I never claimed there were no greedy businesses, I just claimed that not all of them were.
And what isssues were brought up? As far as I can tell, this whole derail has so far remained in the realm of the theoretical.

[Glowcat]

Anita recently attended a panel at GaymerX this year that I found pretty informative about online harassment faced by women online. It talked a bit about gamer culture in general and how gamers respond to what they see as threats in an irrational manner that may be influenced by a history of fundalogicals always trying to censor games.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0qxtKz2vZw

Watch it if you want. Or don't. It's around an hour long.

[Rolepgeek]

It's not just semantics, there's an actual difference!
The primary motivation of practically everyone who goes into business is to make money. And as long as that business doesn't do any harm, they should be allowed to run it. Greed, I'd argue, is present if they start harming people to make money, for example by pushing gender stereotypes to increase their profits. If they just serve an existing demand, it's just sound business practice.
TL;DR: Societal change can't come from businesses, because that's not what businesses do. The only moral requirement we can make of businesses is not to harm people.

First, we can make whatever moral requirement we want of businesses.

Second, please read this.

[Reelya]

Anita recently attended a panel at GaymerX this year that I found pretty informative about online harassment faced by women online. It talked a bit about gamer culture in general and how gamers respond to what they see as threats in an irrational manner that may be influenced by a history of fundalogicals always trying to censor games.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0qxtKz2vZw

Watch it if you want. Or don't. It's around an hour long.

Yeah, i sort of got that, when you look at the anti Jack Thompson stuff it's not that qualitatively different to the harassment of campaigners like Anita. He got death threats, people made games where you kill him, etc. Rape threats are the only thing that is missing, and it could be argued that's mainly down to biology / heterosexual bias rather than gender bias.

[Neonivek]

I've actually been thinking a long time on this current discussion on Anita's videos.

With the thought on whether or not sexualized women in videogames in a sandbox, or any game that lets you murder anyone you want, should get more protection by either being unable to be killed or to punish the player for killing them (What is odd... is what she is suggesting is kind of what happens in Duke Nukem).

I just don't agree with it. It would be one thing if it had a moral basis on its own, but it just seems preachy the way described... like trying to kill a priest in Kings Quest (you just flat out die... mind you, you can't kill most people. So this is just an easter egg) except somehow worse.

It is one of the few ideas she has come up with that actually feels like censorship as opposed to an alternative.

Second, please read this.

Adam Smith wasn't a Capitalist in fact he was anti-capitalist... True story.

Karl Marx was pro-capitalism... True story.

It is kind of interesting how history remembers them differently then how they actually were.

[Rolepgeek]

Personally, I couldn't less about who liked and didn't like capitalism.

I don't see how it's relevant to this.

My point was about Smith's Law. Greed is one of the worst motivating factors a person can have. By which I do not mean 'self-interest'. I mean greed, as in the desire for wealth or luxury above and beyond what is needed for a comfortable standard of living, into excessive amounts.

By the way, your evidence for those claims?

[Reelya]

Rather than say Marx was "pro-capitalist" I think it's more on the money to say that under Marxism, they way he proposed it as opposed to Leninism, many aspects of the capitalist system would still exist. Marx posited Capitalism -> Socialism -> Communism as an evolution, so each system still has many aspects of the stage before it.

For example, Marx's "end game" is basically a stateless system where workers self-organize and run the means of production. In practice, say a group of workers take over a shoe factory. That's great for them, they now have a whole shitload of shoes and nobody else taking a percentage.

But you can't eat shoes, so they still need to trade their shoe-surplus for other goods, which means negotiating a price for shoes vs a price for bread, and so on. i.e. a free market. Actually, possibly more free than the markets we have now. Even if you go "moneyless" as Marx said, there's still a decision to be agreed upon: how many fucking loaves of bread do we get back for each shoe we make?

Also, if some other workers decide to build their own shoe factory (takeovers would be in a transitional phase only) there's really nobody to tell them not to, since there are no regulatory authorities in Marxist Communism. Theoretically the other lot of workers could come over and punch the crap out of you though, because under Marx's plan there's also nobody to tell them not to do it. So competition is still a thing if you go by Marx's ideas.

He never said "everything in the world should be controlled by a central authority" because Marxist analysis would identify that central authority as a class and Marxist theory states that any minority ruling class ends up exploiting everyone else. In other words Leninism/Stalinism fails Marxist analysis because it fails the test of eradicating classes from society, which is a central tenet of Marxism.

Really, if you look at it Marx's core idea was to recognize the inherent conflict between business owners and business employees, deciding that if the employees own the business, that whole conflict just evaporates. Just creating a new owner class (government) doesn't do away with the basic conflict that worker's control of the factory was meant to prevent. It's just a new label on the same us/them dynamic.

[Helgoland]

Second, please read this.

I... don't quite see how that's relevant. I'm a social democrat, I already agree with that 'Smith's law'!
I have to admit I only skimmed it, though. But it veers off into immigration policy anyway, so...

And regarding bad motivating factors, what about desire for power? Not as a means, but as an end. Or the imposition of some divine order. Or some really violent sexual urges. The list goes on and on, really. Any motivational factor has an undesirable extreme. The nice thing about greed, when compared to all these things, is: Greed is much more easily controlled.
What alternative motivation would you suggest?

First, we can make whatever moral requirement we want of businesses.

Well, we can make any moral requirement we want of anything, can't  we? But you wouldn't get angry at a rock for not doing enough to bring world peace by tuesday. There's several different kinds of 'can'.
We may be talking about different things, maybe that's where the confusion comes from: I meant 'can' in a legal sense; because of nulla poene sine lege*, prohibitions are much easier to implement than commandments (is that the right word?). The same way, we can't really demand anything from actual people besides not harming others. On a personal level, it's a different story, of course.
If that was actually the reason, I'm sorry for having caused confusion.
*Altum videtur, I know.

@Marx and capitalism: Marx thought capitalism was a necessary stage in the development of a society. So you could call Marx pro-capitalist, but only in the context of a feudal society.

[Neonivek]

Well here is something we haven't discussed.

How damaging are videogames to women as a whole?

I mean while I am generally against censorship, I am not opposed to it in a situation where it would be harmful.

I mean we know videogames are not exactly progressive (except when they are... which, they have been improving), but can we have some sort of idea on the general level of oppression, repression, sexist pressure, hurt feelings, psychological damage, sociological stagnation, lost wages, jobs, injuries that this has caused on its own?

That way we can see if government intervention, as opposed to creating general awareness, is justified.

I'll try to find things later... I am kind of sleepy.

[Rolan7]

That's a good question, and I have no idea how to answer it.  A lot of us have opinions on how severe it is, but calculating actual impact is some complicated science.  I guess what we need are links to scientific analysis of the issues...