It is attractive to women and those descendents of black Sub-Saharan Africans, but I believe for different reasons.

In fact, I think that, because women became more politcally active in the 19th century, the ideas of Marx, and Hegel, and even certain concepts derived from the French Revolution became more influential. Look at the European Socialist Revolutions of 1848. Or Engel's introductions---eight of them, count them---to Marx's "Communist Manisfesto". I think it was in the last one, the eighth, that he says since the industrial revolution has raised the living standards of the workers, they will need to be "agitated" in order to get the Revolution going.

But the people of Sub-Saharan Africa have an inherent communal-mindedness. You will find it in their language even. For instance, in the Bantu languages of the Yoruba people of Nigeria (from whence most of the slaves in America have come) their epistemology extends only to this: One knows a thing is true by first hand experience, called "mo"; but if that is not available, then the test of truth lies in "gbagbo" agreement with the community.

I have hypothesized that these people have not evolved to the point where they are as fully separated from the mother---community---other individuals as certain other races are. They thus have more of a dependent nature, and that is becoming very obvious in the black communities of America.

"Are you not an evolutionist?"

Given that there is no proof for such a notion, no. That aside, I'd still like to discuss an example of where you see no choice but a win-lose scenario. Or maybe I misunderstood your assertion.

"Well, maybe I'm just not sure how you are intending to use the word "lust". Clue me in."

We are talking about individuals. Individuals have intrinsic motivations driven by their internal values and morals. Those motivations are demonstrative through action. Action can be magnified through the use of tools and so creating a larger effect, but the tools themselves are not what starts the chain of events rolling. A lever - no matter how long and aptly braced - is not going to move the world without someone to apply the necessary force. Only an individual motivated to do something is going to effect action.

Take for example Jeffrey Epstein. He was a classic partaker and purveyor of Lust - specifically sexual avarice. His Lust drove him to not only participate in illegal actions and try to hide them, but encourage and enable others to do the same. Did his money and private jet drive him to commit these actions? No. They merely expanded the range of actions he could take.

"But power IS different."

No. It really isn't. It's still just a tool.

"Power is the dominant status of say the alpha male in a wolf pack . And the urge to be powerful determines perhaps who holds that status."

Aside from the fact that this illustration fails because people have Will and self-determination which animals lack, let's examine the notion of a human "alpha male" for the purposes of discussion. What does that proposed "power" get that individual? Nothing whatsoever in and of itself. The "alpha male" still has to act on a motivation - just like anyone else. All the power does is accentuate the action. Now can a person seek to leverage their power to obtain more power? Certainly. I'm not debating that. But what is the motivation at play? Lust for more power. We have to be very careful in our terminology to differentiate between actors and props, lest we - like Alex Baldwin - accuse the revolver of being responsible for the death of producer rather than the individual who pulled the trigger.

I never said that, what you are inferring in your last statement.

And I am mainly referencing the holes in the Nash Equilibrium.

Are you not an evolutionist?

I think what prompted the writing of the constitution was the hatred of being an english colony. We dont have that unifying situtation any more. Our constitution is for all practical purposes a dead document for at least half the USA population.

socialism has a basic attraction over many years. Maybe its a yearning to go back to the socialism of childhood where parents take care of you, who knows? It just doesnt go away, no matter how BAD it is in terms of results.

I'm still looking for an actual example to discuss. The example of natural selection is problematic for at least two reasons.
First, it has yet to be proven: there is no fossil record to indicate it has ever taken place. (Most specifically, we are talking about human beings here with rational capacity - not animals.) Second, a competitive advantage is actually critical to value exchange because it allows people to take advantage of arbitrage opportunities to their own gain. That being said, these advantages do not automatically or necessarily mean that one individual MUST profit at the expense or detriment of another.

Should a random mutation result in a greater ability to think abstractly, then this individual will not only have a greater propensity to contract disease and die, but the community itself would banish, exile, or kill and eat him. That explains the stagnation of the cultures in equatorial regions.

Sadly, we are seeing, especially in Nigeria, a return to the ritual killing and maiming of children for body parts. A Mr. Leo Igwe is trying to combat this crudity, but is being persecuted by both religious and governmental bodies. A perfect example of how the traditional cultures of equatorial regions have remained stagnant and backwards.

You're saying language is what determines a species as human? The use of language, you believe, is what separates the human species from the lower animals?

Well, yes it does, to a certain extent. But that is not the determinant of what is human. It is the gift of foresight, or the evolved sense of the future, the sense of the "about-to-be" that determines our humanity.

But our sense of knowing that there is going to be a future, a tomorrow, a next week or next year, comes at a high price. We can't with 100% certainty know what is going to happen in that near or far future. (The development of science and logic has taken a great deal of uncertainty from the future, but it has also added uncertainty)

But that is why the human need to know, as the ancient Greeks, perhaps driven by the trauma of the Trojan War, were so intent on finding out "How will we know", is without doubt the most important problem facing humanity today, since the Leftist/Liberals decided to conceal the truth of reality, and three generations of young people no longer know how to know.

I haven't stated this very well. Maybe others can enlarge on the topic.

Well, maybe I'm just not sure how you are intending to use the word "lust". Clue me in.

But power IS different. And maybe what I haven't made clear, is that I'm talking in a biological sense, not simply a philosophical, dried-out, sense. Power is the dominant status of say the alpha male in a wolf pack . And the urge to be powerful determines perhaps who holds that status. Without the "will to power" could an alpha male, the strongest and brightest, succeed to leadership status? And if the strongest and brightest is not successful, if the weaker becomes leader, will not the wolf pack disintegrate and/or devolve?

Obamma said some years ago, "The future is not only for the strong". To which I replied: If the future is not for the strong, there will be no weak.

That is just the way it is. And maybe that is why I see power, or the urge for power, as different. Both the object, and the method. I may have led you to believe I was confusing object and method, but believe me I am not. I am, however, looking at it from a biological strategy viewpoint.

Now, money is a power tool, a means of obtaining the sought after goal; but then so is liberalism. A means to achieve power.

True. The percentages never favor the maverick. They are rare, but they seem to have the most influence. In liberty, the minority usually win in the end.

Potentially, yes. And I'm not necessarily trying to disown the moral justification of trade. After all, pretty early on, maybe as early as 5,000 years ago, trade replaced raiding as a means to accumulate goods and wealth.

But the Nash Equilibrium is used for more than economics. It is used in biology, and other places. A simple example of what is NOT a win-win situation is of course the evolutionary concept of Natural Selection: "On the Origin of Species". Or, although people do not like to say this: survival of the fittest; the competitive advantage that some mutations have over former genetic structures.

She might have written it, but I experienced it. Did you see my comment on textbooks?

Geez, I'm beginning to sound like Tom Paine or something!!
These are the times that try men's souls.

Or maybe the Kingston Trio in their song: The MTA!

Yes, I'm sure you have thousands, Dobrien. And as I've always said: Devolution is easier than evolution. But are you only going to be a prophet of future events, and not a creator of them?
Now it is time to take it to the enemy, and who better to do that than those who actually understand the necessity for individualism. Independence in thinking as well as in living.

You will never convince others if you remain solely in the Gulch.

Yes, that is one of my favorite quotes from Rand. I think she credited her husband Frank O'Connor for the line.
Another is from the 1940's version of "The Fountainhead": (I don't remember who said it, one of the bad guys---maybe I'll watch the movie again today), but it goes something like this: "I deal in the human spirit. And I sell short." The Liberal mind-set.

The thing is, I CAN say that to the bas*; but it doesn't keep me from feeling their hatred, and recognizing their stupidity.

I don't agree with you about central banks. I am more in agreement with Herr Arthur von Gwinner. I found this in an article from the New York Times, I think it was 1912:
"When, Herr von Gwinner said, the United States possessed a central bank, the phenomenon of Clearing House certificates with which America was accustomed periodically to edify the world would vanish. America would require in establishing a central bank so to shape its Constitution that its policy could never be controlled or manipulated for political interest or for the interest of a special financial group. If the bank became the plaything of special interests it would prove more fatal than the disease which it was created to destroy."

Now I'm not using this as an "appeal to authority"; as I have said elsewhere, I was a graduate student in global macroeconomics in the summer of 2008, "when my government found me", except for yourself, to whom it could prove a starting point for questioning certain conspiracy theories.
I am a more-or-less free market capitalist, and a moderate Monetarist. The economy needs monitoring by something.

Here is a link to the von Gwinner article:
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/time...

I'll look at it. But the best explanation of the public execution of JFK I found in a fictionalized account, a book written by Robert K. Tanenbaum, who was Deputy Chief Counsel for the House Select Committee on Assassinations to investigate the JFK and MLK assassinations. The book was a fictionalized account, in order that it would be published. He titled it "Corruption of Blood".
I may start a thread called: "The Public Execution of John F. Kennedy".

I have gone to college off and on, since I graduated from high school in 1961, from 1961 to 1964. I returned in 1970 to 1974, 1983 to 1990, 2000 to 2003. And each time I returned, I found the courses easier, the problems less complicated and less involved, the tests less intimidating.

In 2018, when working with some very highly qualified cosmologists and mathematical physicists, I tried to get a copy of my physics text---Halliday and Resnick---from 1984, but had to settle for a more recent edition, probably late '90's. I was dumbstruck! The "problems" were "solved" by following certain "steps"---algorithms, which are used to instruct machines, you know like the "long division algorithm" where all you have to is memorize steps.
Each section was followed by "key takeaways" in six colors. No thinking was required to pass these courses. When I asked why they dumbed-down the text, dumbed-down the course, and dumbed-down the students, they said the students complained the texts were too difficult. It seems to me that if a student is having difficulty following the text, then he belongs in a different profession!

But the crowning point was when I found, in the section on Faraday's (my hero) electromagnetic induction of an electric circuit, a picture of Jimi Hendrix, who set his "electric" guitar on fire on stage! Hendrix was a destroyer, Faraday a creator. What kind of foolish intellect would even dare relate the two? I was furious. I checked the book's credits, and sure enough, it was women who were behind the lay-out of that text.

I did say "TODAY'S Internet links", and yes I was referring to Google searches mainly. But there is also this, and you aren't going to like it. The Liberal/Leftist bent or slant in education (K-degree) or indoctrination of America's youth, has given American science and research a more "primitive" outlook than formerly.
It hasn't helped education and learning in America that Affirmative Action decides who goes to college, and not qualification. Or that blacks are given preference over whites who have the same, or even greater, abilities. Why do you think there is such a large population of homeless in this country? Do you suppose the Leftist "positioning" of the less capable in not just America's institutions of (once) higher learning as well as in all walks of life, has drained the spirits of white men?

What did you do with My men, Ladies of the Left?

I am taking action.
Involved in Constitutional County activity.
Involved in clarifying message for school board challengers in this election cycle. Will run for board next cycle.

Philosophically, Laotzu was the first objectivist in print. Tao te'ching. I use the teachings from long ago, coupled with The Objectivist's Ethics, and most recent, (https://metamind.quora.com/?q=meta-mind)
the latter is a four part essay posted Dec 7-12. Homo-Sapiens = Language. Language=Trade=Commerce

This is what humans are and do. Simple as a screwdriver. None of this was learned in school. Broke down every "box" that tried to keep me.

"It is a different motivator, attitude, has different pleasure "receptors", stems from different goals, and is the driving force behind human debilities."

Let's look at this statement critically. What is power? It is status and ability. It is the possibility for action, but not action in and of itself. Power is not a motivation. Lust is a motivation. (So are greed, sloth, envy, etc.) I caution against making the mistake of conflating power itself with a lust for power. That's like conflating a firearm with desire to kill someone with a firearm.

"HOW men vie for power, and HOW men use power is the problem that needs solving today."

I agree. It is not power itself but how it is used which is the moral dilemma. Same thing with money. Money and power are tools - nothing more. It is how they are used and the ends for which they are abused which is the moral issue.

Give me an example of something that can not be a win-win scenario. Is it not the free exchange of goods and services for money the classic example of a win-win?

See Norman Dodd interview and also Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt is an American freelance writer and former senior policy advisor to the U.S. Department of Education during President Reagan’s Admin. She wrote the Dumbing down of America.

Great points Stormi, The truth is out there and the internet will be the Cabals undoing. In fact coming soon is Truth/Social ....it will be the new bull horn as the MSM has lost all credibility.
People will flood the new social media co that Trump is building.