[Newfie]

"I mean, quit yer bitchin and just make plans already. The race has seen tough times before, it's one way of weeding out the genes for stupid."

I must be one of the smart ones. Not only a perfect doomstead (LEED-specified home, solar-powered private well, secure perimeter, orchards, pasture, chicken coop and shed, timber) but I am in the most remote, isolated, watered, temperate, resource-rich place in the most secure stable wealthy state in the most powerful nation on the planet. Whose jealous? lol

All the folks coming after you with guns to make it their own?

You are right of course, just pointing out that no matter the level of prep we are each still vulnerable. No perfect answer....except my HUUUGE moat!

[KaiserJeep]

I am convinced that the endless parade of Zombie movies, Zombie TV series, and even Zombie commercials is because people can sense the impending Doom. I have never found Zombies the slightest bit entertaining, I only viewed the original 1968 Night of the Living Dead once
and was bored - dead is dead, don't be foolish. (Curiously, I love a good campy vampire movie, especially the Hammer Films classics.)

I'm also not sure I could ever regard anybody else as somebody to be killed, either - even if they are trying to steal my food. Doubtless I would be a failure as a doomsteader because of this. But we have to behave as civilized people, or our genes simply are not worth preserving.

[sparky]

.
A small item epitomize the whole debate

among the video game community , worth about 10 billions bucks a year ,
there is a competition for the market of war squad shooters
the biggest company , Activision own the Call of Duty franchise
the fans have been asking for less futuristic game-play and a return to the old values of WW2
.....stuff the yokel Activision though , with a bit of media management we can get anyone to buy anything
they released their latest opus ,infinite warfare, going to space, even with Zombie thrown in
and a neo-con style of reporting ,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeF3UTkCoxY

it was monstrously panned by the community , the trailer beat all record for dislike with 3 millions
( just behind justin Bieder immortal 6 millions dislikes )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tfimeu9XY0

EA , the challenger ,released their trailer game to raving acclaim , it's gritty ,and give people what they want
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7nRTF2SowQ

People know what they want and sooner or later don't want to be taken for mugs
watch both and make your own mind up

[Ibon]

Long article but worth reading. The assumption that liberal democracies are stable political structures has never been tested when the standard of living declines. This is an important point that is actually very closely related to the dynamics that will unfold when the consequences of human overshoot start accelerating. Namely, that the resilient status quo will remain fixed and in place in the face of ecological calamities.

It is also worth noting that this article actually does not address the real root of the crisis which is the simple fact that our planet can n longer sustain the model that each generation experiences a higher standard of living than its predecessor. This is the ultimate agent of profound political change.

We are actually slowly but surely yawning our way ever closer toward a brave new world. Is anyone out there really paying attention or even able to focus on the big picture?

The Roots of the Crisis

By historical standards, liberal democracies have been extraordinarily stable. Poor countries have trouble sustaining democratic rule. Some rich countries, especially those with vast oil wealth, have always been controlled by autocrats. But once a wealthy country has successfully transitioned to democracy, its form of government is locked in. This is about as remarkable a fact as political science has on offer. Never in history has a wealthy, consolidated democracy collapsed. Not once.

That remarkable fact has made it easy to ascribe the stability of the West’s political institutions to its fundamental attributes: universal suffrage, rule of law, checks and balances, individual rights. Each country gives its own spin on the genealogy of its particular political settlement. Americans tend to thank the genius of their founders, the French the principled visionaries on the barricades, Brits the fortuitous rise of pluralistic institutions owed to the blood-soaked compromises struck between lord and liege. But for all of the specificities of national myth and memory, the triumphalist upshot is remarkably similar in every democratic country. The question of the best regime form, which had animated the writings of thinkers from Socrates to Rousseau, has supposedly been solved. The end of history has arrived.

This happy story overlooks a number of facts that have been so formative of our political world that it is easy to forget just how extraordinary they, too, are by historical standards. All through the history of democratic stability, the incomes of ordinary citizens grew rapidly. All through the history of democratic stability, a democracy has been the most powerful country in the world. And all through the history of democratic stability, democracies have been highly homogeneous.

Over the last decades, each of these factors stopped being the case. Living standards stagnated. The rise of China is threatening American hegemony. Democracies in North America and Western Europe are more diverse than they have ever been before.

History cannot tell us how liberal democracies perform under those circumstances, so we are only just starting to gather the first shreds of evidence for what the effects of those transformations might be. What little we know suggests that the answer is not going to be pretty.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_ ... ected.html

[Tanada]

I would point out that at its height the Roman Empire was a very liberal society. Food for the poor, medical care for the sick, sexual promiscuity of whatever variety got your motor running. Then when things fell apart the so called Dark Ages ensued when all those 'liberal' aspects went away in favor of raw survival necessity. For close to a thousand years people blamed the liberal aspects of Roman society for the downfall because the people were distracted by all the pleasures of life instead of the hard work needed to maintain that lifestyle.