Zeitgeist: Moving forward

bendix

Xiderpunk wrote: »

Bare in mind the important reality that our system kills many more people every year than Marxist communism ever did in total. People die because of lack of money. Not because the world doesn't produce enough food. We have enough money, I food shop at Marks & Sparks and can buy as much as I want let alone need. Is that wrong? Frankly yes.

.

How old are you? Seriously? The sophistication of your arguments would embarrass a 18 year old wannabe communist student with long hair and pimples, who spouts the texts and wears the trendy Lenin badge on his dufflecoat because he thinks it impresses the girls in his sociology lecture, but has to remember to take it off before he goes home to see his parents in Guildford every weekend.

julieq

Xiderpunk, this is a bog standard agitprop video by and for nutters on the internet. It gives no useful information and it's employing bog standard demagoguery to push a particular conclusion.

Like it or not, the current system has evolved as a means of arbitrating disputes over resources - wealth, obtained generally by work of one kind or another - is invested in obtaining resources. The more wealthy you can become by whatever means, the better chance you have of getting resources. That stimulates individuals to work harder or to enable others to work harder.

Take that element of competition away, and you remove any incentive to work. The result is that no-one works at all effectively. That has been the outcome everywhere this sort of approach has been attempted. And in fact a de facto elite always emerges because someone has to suppress the desire of the masses to improve their lot in life in one way or another.

Now you may argue that it's a bad thing, because one of the means of obtaining wealth is to steal it from others (which we were very good at 50 or 100 years ago) but the way the world is currently being organised around basic adherence to international law, globalism in general, and increasing respect for human rights, that situation is correcting.

And in fact the reason our young are now squealing so hard about the unfairness of the system is precisely because wealth is transferring elsewhere due to globalisation. In fact anyone here is vastly more wealthy than most of the rest of the world and has a long way to go before any resource shortage takes them anywhere close.

Xiderpunk

bendix wrote: »

How old are you? Seriously? The sophistication of your arguments would embarrass a 18 year old wannabe communist student with long hair and pimples, who spouts the texts and wears the trendy Lenin badge on his dufflecoat because he thinks it impresses the girls in his sociology lecture, but has to remember to take it off before he goes home to see his parents in Guildford every weekend.

37 and what is the point of your post? I am missing it somewhere.. what 'arguments' are you referring too?

Incidentally, feel free Mr internet warrior to carry on with immature insults, I really couldn't give a !!!! what you think about me personally however at least try if you disagree with the film to present an alternative.

bendix

Xiderpunk wrote: »

37 and what is the point of your post? I am missing it somewhere.. what 'arguments' are you referring too?

Incidentally, feel free Mr internet warrior to carry on with immature insults, I really couldn't give a !!!! what you think about me personally however at least try if you disagree with the film to present an alternative.

The alternative is the world you live in. Look around you. Look at the computer you're tapping away at. Look at your food-stuffed fridge. Look at the pub you'll wander down to tonight, before heading back home (public transport or car) to flick through the channels on tv.

Those are the things created by the system you despise.

The film is, as julieq so eloquently put it, a load of nonsense and one-dimensional arguments put together by nutters for nutters.

Our lives have become so empty, our minds so flaccid, because our stomachs are so full, that millions of bored people like you believe this nonsense.

Curiously, they're less convinced of the arguments in Laos, North Korea and Cuba. I wonder why.

Xiderpunk

julieq wrote: »

Xiderpunk, this is a bog standard agitprop video by and for nutters on the internet. It gives no useful information and it's employing bog standard demagoguery to push a particular conclusion.

Like it or not, the current system has evolved as a means of arbitrating disputes over resources - wealth, obtained generally by work of one kind or another - is invested in obtaining resources. The more wealthy you can become by whatever means, the better chance you have of getting resources. That stimulates individuals to work harder or to enable others to work harder.

Take that element of competition away, and you remove any incentive to work. The result is that no-one works at all effectively. That has been the outcome everywhere this sort of approach has been attempted. And in fact a de facto elite always emerges because someone has to suppress the desire of the masses to improve their lot in life in one way or another.

Now you may argue that it's a bad thing, because one of the means of obtaining wealth is to steal it from others (which we were very good at 50 or 100 years ago) but the way the world is currently being organised around basic adherence to international law, globalism in general, and increasing respect for human rights, that situation is correcting.

And in fact the reason our young are now squealing so hard about the unfairness of the system is precisely because wealth is transferring elsewhere due to globalisation. In fact anyone here is vastly more wealthy than most of the rest of the world and has a long way to go before any resource shortage takes them anywhere close.

On the contrary, the film does provide verfiable information, all the information can be checked, so how is that not 'useful'? You have not however answered the questions above. So you believe finite resources are infinite?

Fine if you dismiss the argument as put forward by 'nutters' that is your prerogative, none-the-less I find it hard to believe that you truly are a believer that the global economy has a long term future.

Xiderpunk

bendix wrote: »

The alternative is the world you live in. Look around you. Look at the computer you're tapping away at. Look at your food-stuffed fridge. Look at the pub you'll wander down to tonight, before heading back home (public transport or car) to flick through the channels on tv.

Those are the things created by the system you despise.

The film is, as julieq so eloquently put it, a load of nonsense and one-dimensional arguments put together by nutters for nutters.

Our lives have become so empty, our minds so flaccid, because our stomachs are so full, that millions of bored people like you believe this nonsense.

Curiously, they're less convinced of the arguments in Laos, North Korea and Cuba. I wonder why.

I do not despise the system. I have done very well out of the system. I just realise that it can't last forever, we can not continue to forever expand our material production and consumption in order to support the system. It's a fundamental and undeniable fact, what is hard to believe about that?

Xiderpunk

The point the film makes about sustainability in the current system is really quite simple:

We have to grow continuously for our monetary system to work, we have to produce more and more of everything. The consequence is resources are consumed.

OK where is the evidence of this..

The rainforests are not shrinking at all? Fertile land is not over farmed? Sea fish stocks are not shrinking? Hard to argue with this really as you would have to be living in a cave to realize that the system has failed historically to protect this, quite simply because our system depends upon there consumption.

bendix

Xiderpunk wrote: »

I do not despise the system. I have done very well out of the system. I just realise that it can't last forever, we can not continue to forever expand our material production and consumption in order to support the system. It's a fundamental and undeniable fact, what is hard to believe about that?

Don't worry about it. You'll be dead in 30 years. Don't have kids.

Problem sorted.

Xiderpunk

bendix wrote: »

Don't worry about it. You'll be dead in 30 years. Don't have kids.

Problem sorted.

Thank you for your insightful and constructive post offering keen debate on the alternative solutions you have offered on problems which you have not refuted yet clearly have no answer.

bendix

Don't sweat the small stuff. Capitalism self-corrects and, besides, I disagree with the central premise that 'we need to grow continuously for our monetary system to work.'

There are some sustainability issues, for sure, but people have been talking about the death of some natural resources for the last hundred years. And, yet, somehow, technology changes, food supplies remain steady etc etc. Energy and food is cheaper and more accessible today in real terms than at any point in our history.

It aint a bad world you know. Don't sweat it.

And don't breed.