At one point, the idea that we could have a society without hereditary absolute rulers was a silly childish pipe dream. Just because something is novel doesn't mean it shouldn't be weighed for merit. OTOH having hung with the Communists...and gone to a May first meeting...I became convinced it had actually become an article of religion with them, that Communism would work. What I think we need is a willingness to experiment. More importantly,though, we need to not start thinking we have the One Right Answer and/or becoming a follower of said One Right Answer. If what we're doing isn't working, we need to discard it and try something else... It is at this point I would like to point out that Capitalism is based on limitless expansion...and we live on a finite sphere... Getting into space aside(and I'm all for that!) how do Capitalists plan on sustaining that limitless Capitalist expansion on a spheroid limited in size?
That's a totally false assumption. A company can grow to some size at which it's sales and/or service returns a comfortable profit - and then it need not expand any farther. While it's true that the BIG ones don't want to stop growing, many small business are quite happy to remain small and avoid all the headaches that come from getting too big. It all depends on who is driving the company.
:Getting into space aside(and I'm all for that!) how do Capitalists plan on sustaining that limitless Capitalist expansion on a spheroid limited in size? By Becoming Conservationists of all the resources and then allocating those resources as they deem fit.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
That while I don't have all the answers, maybe you don't either? However, I do carry a several magazines of loaded questions... Basically admitting the possibility that you may not have the right answer is they key to finding the answer...and the insistence you have the final answer is the shutting off of the gathering of new information. That's an individual piece of the system. I'm talking about they system entire. Especially considering the ecological need to reduce population... I'm for that, if done in a way that's both sustainable and balances both the rights of non-wealthy people and the rights of nonhuman species to maintain viable populations. But that's certainly not lassiez-faire capitalism...that's a managed capitalism...which your average Tea partier would probably start screaming "Communism!" at... (pardon, gotta do job stuff, BRB)
I should have finished the last post w/ "Chimpkin never stop believing that we can make this world a better place." Capitalism is what we have got right now but it will not always be so, too many contradictions.
Absolutely! Just like i felt about Kent State, but what is your point? Sorry Chimpkin this was in answer o Emils post!
I'll try, but since I'm a confirmed pessimist, I don't tend to think we will. I get tired of having my hopes getting smashed...it's more comfortable to either be right or pleasantly surprised. It seems that socialism and capitalism are the two tastes that taste great together...some things are best done by free enterprise, some communally, others by regulated enterprise...and deciding which is which, and who ought to pay for the communal stuff, and how much, requires some sort of messy democratic decision-making process. No neat answers; we get to argue endlessly. Joy.:grumble:
We dont live on a finite sphere. Why do plants grow and regrow? why does water get replenished? mineral replenishment? and there is always recycling. What system does not use resources? where...when? Capitalism does not stifle ingenuity either. Look at the communist countries living off discoveries made under capitalism. Even if you just consider the medical discoveries because i have to say these are made under capitalism. Even if it means taking a pill to keep a person alive. Because when it comes to something like that...everyone is a capitalist.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! K? K.
Not really. What i was referring to are people being secure in there jobs (dont want to mention any names) and making a hell of a lot more than i do publicly stating (whining) "oh...oh...socialism is so much better" But you are (not you) not a socialist yourself, you fat F***. Do you give to the poor? Do you help the downtrodden? I think it is a personality flaw or some psychological deficiency. The point is what is stopping peole from giving a percentage of their incomes to people who are disadvantaged? Nothing, yet they dont do this very much and many of these bastards dont do it at all. BUT they open their god damned mouths and spread their bull shit. Why?:shrug:
The sun is 100% efficient. But we can't be 100% efficient at capturing its' energy...and that doesn't change V=4/3piR^3 (thank you wolfram mathworld). Mineral reposits take millions of years-geologic stretches of time- to get laid down...we're digging them up a lot faster. Plants regrow as long as they have healthy earth...which we're losing. We don't recycle but a small fraction of the waste we make-I should know, I practice dumpster diving for fun, furnishing, and wardrobe expansion. If there were some way to convert cardboard into structural material for a house I could build a house in less than a year with dedicated diving. Do not forget, our remarkable agricultural productivity here in the US is due to heavy use of petrochemicals, meaning that it takes 7-10 calories of fossil fuel to make 1 calorie of food(scroll down a bit): http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/energy/ This is why I linked to the peak oil chart. I think we've already hit peak gas here too...although according to the wikipedia page we only use about 5% of our natural gas consumption total for making fertilizer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertilizer So at least there's one wall we won't hit for a while... But there's the issue of topsoil loss, which is making our "renewable" resources perhaps less so than we'd thought, or at least more fragile: http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/march06/soil.erosion.threat.ssl.html So capitalism is predicated on a growing population, when there's ample evidence the biosphere can't sustain what we've got now. And we're running out of the fossil fuels that allow an artificially jacked-up population level (By that I mean unsustainable). We can and should be managing what we have for sustainability, but that's one of the weaknesses of the way Westerners practice capitalism-it's all about the short term...and this is the worst way to farm. Think of it as strip-farming...like strip-mining...the damage done isn't worried about, it's about the stockholders. They just sell the land when it's played out. So unless you want to start building floating cities, underground cities, air villages...we're certainly running out of arable land. Sea farming, maybe... So I'm telling you that, barring great tech fixes, the old paradigm isn't viable. OTOH, I'm not saying communism or anarchism is a viable paradigm either. What I am, in fact saying is that we will have to muddle out something workable and new...and that refusal to be flexible and pragmatic (as opposed to dogmatic) is going to cause more suffering for us.
Just pointing out that there are renewables and there does exist things that can be and in fact are self sufficient. The problems you list are going to occur (although we really dont know for sure) regardless of the political system and just a matter of time. Everything points to these issues being more likely overcome by a system that does not impose limits. But there are renewable alternatives. Just a matter of getting them to work and many ideas are also suppressed. Not only that but we only believe we have access to all available information but that just isnt true. People are definitely motivated by reward probably more than just some recognition. There is nothing wrong with that either because even as children we respond to our parents rewarding us from the time we are able to see.
You're not reading my posts, Mr John. I'm not advocating for pure communism. I think it's been proven not to work in the real world. I think lassiez-faire capitalism has proven to cause a lot of misery too. ( And food poisoning-ever read "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair? or at least the 'factory tour' bit? We lost more soldiers from food poisoning in the Spanish-American war than to enemy fire) That which seems to produce the most satisfied bunch of people so far is a democratic government, a managed capitalism and certain socialized services, which services those are democratically decided, as it is the people who have to pay for them, after all. Anyway, I have to get up and deal with po'folks county medical care...it's rotten because to some bureaucrat somewhere, I'm poor, so I deserve incompetent care by interns who are barely supervised and have no idea what they're doing and don't believe me when I report important illness symptoms.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
An interesting link. Many years ago I read that >90% of the cost of an Idaho potato eaten in NYC was the energy cost. That was when energy was much cheaper so at least 95% now is. Article had clever title "Idaho potato is 90% oil." as I recall. I have for years been stating that the average food item on US table traveld 1200 miles to get there, but your link states it is now 1500 miles: "... Because industrial farming draws on the economy of scale, our food is increasingly grown in concentration in specific areas of the country. This is so common that it has shaped much of our country’s geographic identities—the western Plains are wheat country, the Midwest is the Corn Belt—but it has reached extremes. For instance, approximately ninety percent of all the fresh vegetables consumed in the United States are grown in California’s San Joaquin Valley.xix This national-scale system is possible only because it uses large quantities of fossil fuels to transport food products to the consumer. It is now common practice to ship food not just around the country, but around the world. (In 2005, more than $120 billion of agricultural products crossed U.S. borders as imports and exports.)xx As a result, the average American foodstuff travels an estimated 1,500 miles before being consumed.xxi ..." (xxi etc. is the links to their sources.) There are potentially very serious civil problems for the urban poor in this system if oil cost double, as they are likely to as production from deep oceans is much more costly. Already more poor are in need of financial assistance to put food on their tables than ever before in US history. The growing debt burden will make this transfer every more costly for tax payers and they may revolt. Already many private food banks find they lack funds to stock their shelves. There are a lot of guns (about one fore each American) and very hungry people will use them to seek food they suspect is stored in suburban homes rather than starve. The simple fact is that although rich, the US capitalistic system requires that one have money to buy food. The urban poor may not have enough funds soon to pay the prices needed for an urban grocery store to even cover its cost, so they will close. What do you think happens then? One thing, to be on thread, is communism will be harder to paint as evil. It will have considerable appeal to the hungry poor.
