[Ibon]

EU, as in much of what we discuss, the trajectory depends on the severity and speed to which the consequences of human overshoot
unfold.

Staircase decline of energy with many plateaus
where society is forced to recalibrate consumption and expectations. Culture adapts.

One of the failures of prediction is to draw out a linear projection based solely on current trends and then failing to anticipate adaptations and cultural resilience

This is why so many predict the doom that never comes.

I am actually more optimistic regarding the elasticity of culture to respond to external constraints since actually that is how we evolved.

The opulence and resultant decadence of the past couple of generations is the anomaly but for many they think this is the norm.

Basic question. What is more degenerative, opulence or constraints?

[EnergyUnlimited]

I have agreed that there will be some countries which might manage powerdown in civilized way. I have named China as a possible candidate. Japs may follow a suit as well.
All what I say is that transformation to mob rule is one way ticket.
Once embraced it can only be reversed by external forces/assistance or once equlibrium with environment is achieved.
There are countless examples for what I say.
Failed states do not tend to crawl back to civilized life without external assistance, and even then it is an uphill struggle, usually a futile one.
Look around - doom comes - not to us yet but to increasing number of countries.
Somehow I think that doom comes to California right now. It is well and kicking in Sweden and in few other european contries as well.
OK, these places are still better off than Venezuela but they are deteriorating quite fast.

I would also point one thing - progressive attacks against structure of family are making countless numbers of young men who have *nothing* to loose.
Those will be agents of destruction together with brown newcomers.

[Ibon]

I would also point one thing - progressive attacks against structure of family are making countless numbers of young men who have *nothing* to loose.
Those will be agents of destruction together with brown newcomers.

First of all brown newcomers on average hold on to conservative family values more faithfully than decadent members of multiple generations of opulence.

Secondly, on one hand you point out how young men are becoming feminized and losing virility and then the next moment you say they will be agents of destruction.

So are they agents of destruction or butterflies?

[EnergyUnlimited]

First of all brown newcomers on average hold on to conservative family values more faithfully than decadent members of multiple generations of opulence.

Brown newcomers even if from more family friendly societies are not sharing our values of civilized life.
They tend to be from mob ruled countries, so why should they change their believes on the West?
Mob rule is a normal way of life for them and they enjoy it.
Now you may only wonder, how brown people would behave, once *THEY* have absolutely nothing to loose...

Once a *citizen* have realized that despite of what is being said he is in fact a *subject* with no stake in society, he will embrace a mob rule as an avenue to *freedom* even if it is a dangerous path.

Secondly, on one hand you point out how young men are becoming feminized and losing virility and then the next moment you say they will be agents of destruction.

So are they agents of destruction or butterflies?

Feminized men will destroy society by a virtue of being useless and entitled.
BTW, I doubt that being "useless and entitled" are virtues, but in decadent societies like our values are being reversed...
Feminized men will also find some use in gang culture while led by more masculine leader.
They will display comparable nature to females and as you probably know those bad (and worst) gangsters are surrounded by circle of faithful females only eager to spread open legs to them, despite of being often mistreated.
On the other hand those men who did not turn feminized and yet have nothing to loose will simply *hate* feminized and decadent society and destroy it for personal benefit and pure pleasure.

Civilizations are built by cooperating *men* who believe in something.
Women are only supportive staff and a breeding baskets there. Small number of successful female exceptions from the past does not make any change in overall picture.
Once part of men got feminized and another part dont have any stake in society and have no interest to contribute to it, affected civilization fails.

[dissident]

That defeats the point of protest. The point of a protest IS to interfere.

When the colonists in Boston dumped the tea into the harbor nearly 250 years ago, they were interfering with commerce.

BS. Your example pertains to protest against the oppressive entity directly and not unrelated 3rd parties. All these street blocking thugs are scum since they disrupt the lives of people who are not involved in "oppressing" the poor, dear "protestors". This self-anointed elite claiming to represent society is usually a rent-a-crowd serving regime change ambitions of foreign powers or idiots who think that only their opinions and desires matter. Since there is safety in numbers, the vast majority of these "protestor" thugs will never face any consequences for blocking an ambulance and causing personal injury or death. At least the organizers of these "protests" should face hard jail time.

The notion that the voice of these clowns can't be heard if they demonstrate in a designated location as required under law (hence permits are required for protests) is a malicious lie. Impose pain on the system and not on random other people. If you think that such random attacks are justified, then you are a certifibale terrorist.

[Ibon]

EU, the generation emerging would find your worldview antiquated and irrelevant. Granted there are weaknesses in the system but the resiliency of civil society that the current generation will inherit as they mature will not follow your obsolete trajectory.

The minor fractures in civil life are not in any way threatening the integrity of the foundation.

[EnergyUnlimited]

EU, the generation emerging would find your worldview antiquated and irrelevant.

And this by no means is making my observations less valid.

Granted there are weaknesses in the system but the resiliency of civil society that the current generation will inherit as they mature will not follow your obsolete trajectory.

This remains to be seen.
Resiliency can take you only so far... as Romans, Mayans, Egyptians and many others have already learned.
Decadence is not to be confused with resiliency as well.
Watch California and Sweden closely - these are canaries in the mineshaft.

[The_Toecutter]

No. Consumption culture is a symptom of TOO MUCH freedom, aka tragedy of the commons.

You’re only thinking in terms of the freedom to consume. It is implicate in your statement.

Freedoms Americans don’t have:

-The right to bodily integrity
-The right to communicate without intrusion by unwanted 3rd parties that can impose financial and legal consequences on the things one says
-The right to health freedom and health privacy(HIPPA laws are a joke and don’t protect these things)
-Right to travel without being scanned, scrutinized, and/or molested and/or placed at risk of arrest for made-up or catch-all charges(see TSA, see civil asset forfeiture practices)
-Right to unabridged freedom of speech and the right to protest (“free speech” zones that you are “allowed” to protest in and where you are monitored and can face arrest for no reason at all do not count as they defeat the purpose)
-The right to privacy of transactions
-Freedom from unwanted mass surveillance
-The right to private property without any strings attached (even the unabomber was forced to pay taxes on his shack, and never truly owned it. But the Rothschilds, Warburgs, Rockefellers, other well-moneyed dynastic families and their ilk get to have allodial titles on all their property that you and I are not allowed to get)
-The RIGHT to bear arms (unconditional of background checks, otherwise it’s no longer a right)

The list goes on. Check the following link as it’s way more comprehensive than anything I am willing to type right now:

https://washingtonsblog.com/2015/09/americans-have-lost-our-rights.html

You and your neighbors are expected to conform with norms and laws created not by you and your neighbors, but by moneyed interests seeking to profit off of forcing your behavior in a certain direction. You are expected to exist as a piece of inventory to labor not for the purpose of enriching yourself, but for enriching people who capitalize on your labor just by the “virtue” of being born as wealthy owners, where failure to comply with this lopsided and unfair arrangement has unnatural consequences not of your own making designed to prevent you from pursuing life or even existing altogether. You’re not even allowed to live like a primitive, even if you want to, as there are nearly infinite ways to criminalize your existence as such all because someone with money who pays for nice things is unhappy if you get to live for free, regardless of whether its from your own efforts or not.

That’s not freedom. It’s its opposite. It’s a form of slavery that you’re told to believe is freedom, and where one is derided as unpatriotic or communist or any other type of label when they don’t believe it.

I see plenty of individuality out there, really too much (tats and piercings and what not).

It's not individuality that's in short supply, it's any sort of spiritual grounding or purpose in life beyond narcissism.

That more falls into the “buying crap” category, more consumerism.

What about individuality of thought? That seems to be in very short supply these days. Everyone has their own opinions, but they are overwhelmingly just talking points that were force fed to them by a government-infiltrated propaganda machine pretending to be a free press. You’re looked at as an oddity at best and even a menace or possible terrorist at worst if you read certain books and/or have unauthorized thoughts, and you can’t even check a library book out any longer without the possibility of it being subject to scrutiny by people with the power to imprison and kill, all without even a single vote on your part.

What about individuality of action? Those deviations from the mean that outright reject the BAU lifestyle, are cast aside, rejected, imprisoned, rendered destitute, labeled mentally ill, ect. just for refusing to go along to get along with all of the madness around them. Here’s a list of things that are not illegal or even directly harmful to anyone that can get one labeled a “domestic terrorist”:

https://publicintelligence.net/fbi-suspicious-activity-reporting-flyers/

Do you keep more than 7 days of food in your home? Insist on paying with cash instead of credit card? Assert your rights when an officer asks you to waive them? Get nervous standing in long lines with crowds of people? Are an environmentalist? A Christian? Frustrated with a mainstream ideology? Own a gun? Been to a protest? Pro or anti abortion? Dissatisfied with the direction of a political policy?

ANY of the above can get you labeled as an extremist or potential terrorist. Acting independently these days can subject you to scrutiny at minimum, and is effectively a punishment without one even having to commit a crime.

You’re mistaking that very narcissism you mention for this individuality I mention, and they are not the same thing. Any spiritual grounding or purpose in life beyond said narcissism has individuality as a prerequisite. Perhaps that lack of individuality is why such a thing is so rare these days?

Huh? Marijuana is being legalized across the US

a) Not federally
b) Not in practice. You can have your kids taken from you for smoking it, even if you’re not abusive, where the odds are great that they will be abused by the state or by a foster family, or even trafficked should they wind up in state custody all because the parent took a toke. You can smoke it and still be jailed for driving under the influence of it or being intoxicated in public, even after the effects have worn off hours/days/weeks ago thanks to zero tolerance per se laws. As well, you can lose your job or be denied a job, have your assets seized, and any other number of nasty consequences imposed on you that have no natural relation to the action of ingesting it, all consequences imposed by other people who for some reason think they have the right to micromanage your life choices all the while claiming you are free and criticizing and/or penalizing any opinion to the contrary.
c) I was referring to ALL drugs. Let people own and control their own bodies for a change. Stop trying to control, monitor, regulate, and punish what people can choose to freely ingest. It is expensive, it doesn’t work, it is a massive waste of resources, it doesn’t really make us safer(in fact, it does the opposite by providing a black market and the associated crime that comes with it) and is a tired excuse that has been used for more than a century and is still being used to “justify” the unceasing erosion of our civil liberties.

and were you asleep during Occupy Wallstreet

No. Were you?

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/07/14-specific-allegations-of-nypd-brutality-during-occupy-wall-street/260295/

http://www.justiceonline.org/commentary/fbi-files-ows.html

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy

https://www.democracynow.org/2014/3/25/why_did_fbi_monitor_occupy_houston

https://nypost.com/2018/01/09/occupy-wall-street-protester-only-awarded-one-cent-in-suit/

Lets see here. Documenting and databasing of everyone at the protests, even the ones who never did anything illegal, only for many of them to be haunted later on for even participating because they needed a job and now can’t pass the security clearance/background check because they are labelled potential troublemakers/terrorists, even though they may not even have a criminal record. Police beating up on journalists and lawyers who did nothing illegal but document abuse. Kettling then arresting en masse entire crowds, hundreds and even thousands at a time, including journalists, for the “crime” of being at the protest after a small percentage, possibly agent provocateurs hired by the state, turned violent. Some of these same arrestees were then crammed shoulder to shoulder into buses for 12-24 hours straight with no food or water, and forced to piss and shit themselves because they weren’t even unshackled so that they could use a toilet. The FBI/Homeland Security/fusion centers all coordinating a crackdown on the protests at taxpayer expense and the FBI even knowing of a plot to kill Occupy leaders while doing nothing to stop it or arrest the conspirators, and after it wasn’t carried out, refusing to let the would-be victims even know who wanted to kill them. Then, those who have ironclad proof of being unjustly assaulted by police, get no real compensation in the court system.

And you think the problem is too much freedom?

To anyone paying attention to this event, it confirmed the U.S. is a democracy in name only, and not in practice. It confirmed the U.S. is a corporate-run dictatorship of sorts pretending to be a free country, the leaders of which then punish those that contradict the official narrative of it being a free country by daring to protest the fact that it isn’t.

and Pussy-hat mania?

Dissent that doesn’t disrupt the activities of the power structure and its greatest benefactors is mostly allowed in the world’s “Democracies”. In fact, the Extinction Rebellion was allowed up until the point that it started to disrupt the unelected bureaucrats and commercial interests in the City of London making then policy decisions, often in defiance of the will of the voters who are allowed to “vote” for their puppet of choice.

You're complaining about things that aren't in any way a problem.

Maybe they aren’t a problem to those who are comfortable and well off, and unwilling to do anything about the problem other than a token effort, content that they already got theirs.

When your grandchildren ask you what you did to help stop the clusterfuck of a future they inherit, what are you going to tell them? If you tell them nothing could have been done, they probably won’t believe you and may in fact resent you, because it is simply not true.

Besides, what exactly does people getting high or protesting accomplish, really, besides a lot of broken windows with bricks in them and stoners?

Perhaps instead it could trigger a shift away from consumption culture? The counterculture movement of the 60s was making some headway regarding this, until it too was coopted and eventually destroyed.

The more I read of your posts the less respect I have for you, especially when you hold a murderer like the unabomber up as an idol.

Considering your near constant use of ad hominem attacks to address my statements since you’ve been on these forums, I’ve questioned whether you ever had any at all. Not that it matters much.

I really think your mentality is part of the problem, not the solution, although you'll never acknowledge this, because you've developed an angry revolutionary mindset as you search for something external to blame for your own personal life circumstances.

I’m not “searching” for anything to blame for my circumstances. I could have done a lot worse and am content in knowing I tried to do the right thing, even if I may end up destitute some day as a result of it. What bothers me is there isn’t much of a market for solutions, only more consumption, more extraction, and more systems to help perpetuate it even at the barrel end of a gun if necessary, until it blows up in everyone’s faces and possibly results in a mass dieoff. The biggest money to be made is in mass murder, mass surveillance, mass control, participating in the structures and processes that make these things possible, and with the financial graft that makes it all possible. Isn’t it curious that the priority of the current leadership is not actually in solving those components of the world’s problems that are technically solvable, as they throw token efforts in that direction to look good, hoping that the public forgets the other policies that dwarf them and cause great destruction all over the world. There's always money to throw at endless wars, controlling people, imprisoning people, spying on people, social engineering, conquering, empire building, harassing people into giving up money, "creative" new ways of taxing people, but when it comes to a similarly massive effort to find ways to stabilize humanity's future, to end government debt, to get off of fossil fuels, to change unsustainable business practices and ways of living, it is always derided as "unrealistic". I didn't create this world. Other people created it for me, and are forcing me to participate in it in a way that suits them, and not me, lest they lock me in a cage or kill me if I refuse to be locked in a cage.

Nor were the circumstances with which I was raised conducive towards being one of the lucky few to be successful, given that the greatest predictor of success in this country(and the world) is to be born into it. And I wasn’t. That’s not my fault. I worked for everything I currently have, modest it may be, and as far as I can tell, have never caused anyone harm in the process, and if I ever did, certainly never deliberately. I produced far, far more value than I was ever paid, and had to pay taxes on it, while those who extracted the surplus value didn’t have to pay as much taxes, and have yet to see any significant reward for all those thousands of hours of my life spent working. Mere survival is not a reward, as the primitives can achieve that with greatly less hours of their lives expended toward that end.

I only mentioned my circumstances in this topic to illustrate just what is going on in this country and how things really are. I was not joking or exaggerating at the number of jobs I applied to, and it says a lot, because I was extremely competent at the work I did when I had the job that required me to do it. I know I’m not alone either, as people I graduated with who are skilled and capable are or were fucking homeless, through no fault of their own, with no real or likely legal means available for them to claw their way out. One of them got a roof over their head over a period of months of living on the street by selling dope to get a deposit on an apartment, because their McJob wages were garnished to pay a student loan that went into default when they got out of college and couldn’t find well paying work in a “high demand” field where companies clamored for H1Bs to fill the gap while this person ended up homeless working a McJob, unable to this day to even make the minimum payment on their student loan at that wage. What conclusions am I supposed to draw from these experiences of others as well as my own? Blaming myself for circumstances external to myself is not conducive to finding a solution. Nor is pretending that these external circumstances don’t exist, which is what the mainstream media likes to do with its claims of a “booming” economy that isn’t there in practice or while the government claims inflation is low when my receipts kept over the last decade tell a very different story. Yet I’m part of the problem for not toeing the company line and agreeing with things that are demonstrably false? That’s called gaslighting.

You’re trapped in a bubble of upper-middle-class comfort and do not see how those less fortunate than you live and what events and circumstances they are dealt that influence and filter the choices they are able to make.

In fact, I bet you’ve never had to experience ANY of the following in your life:

-dysfunctional family during childhood
-parent(s) with drug addictions
-parent(s) in prison
-abusive foster families
-molestation
-childhood homelessness
-going 2 or more days without eating
-family members/friends attempting or committing suicide

Or as an adult, you’ve probably never personally experienced the following:

-homelessness
-shootings within your own neighborhood
-close friends/family members committing suicide
-police brutality
-crippling college debt just to get a permission slip to work
-living paycheck to paycheck with nothing to show for it, even when living responsibly and not being wreckless with money
-parents that leave nothing behind but funeral bills when they pass away

I’ve personally experienced and/or witnessed most of the above. And I was not to blame for ANY of it. And it did impact my life choices greatly. But the problem is much bigger than that.

It was also observed that most of these problems, more often than not, were spurned from a grinding sort of financial insecurity that is often deliberately ignored in this country even when it is being experienced first hand, a level of financial insecurity that was induced by (at the time)artificial scarcity, mass manipulation, the lack of honest money combined with endless printing, money issued as debt, wide availability of credit to make up for declining real wages, and the greed of a few people who profit off the collective misery in every direction that they can. These things have consequences to everyone, even when they may not be direct, even if these variables may not be easy to articulate or chart over time. It filters into the prices of everything, the need for credit/loans to afford anything especially needs like food/shelter/transportation/utilities even when one WANTS to save for these things to avoid interest charges and even when one is careful to keep costs down, the medical costs, the crime rate, the culture of materialism, and many other things, all creating a series of feedback loops that encourage and exacerbate the worst tendencies of the rabble you despise from the comfort of your relative ivory tower middle class existence.

I didn’t have things the worst, but were it not for the actions of other people that have worked against my interests, my life could be a lot better today than it is, and were it not for the steps I took to try to better my circumstances, things could be a lot worse for me than they currently are, and were it not for other people exploiting me in some form in most facets of my existence as a condition thereof, I’d probably be much happier as would many others like me. But I cannot unsee or unexperience the things I have seen and experienced, no matter how often you tell me to ignore them.

Angry people with a revolutionary mindset do not occur in a vacuum, or as the result of some malformed ennui or confusion. But go on blaming the “angry revolutionary mindset” as the source of a series of problems caused by the actions of the very leadership you steadfastly defend that the “revolutionaries” are critical of. As long as you “tend to” your “own garden”, you can be comfortable in knowing that you have the metaphorical land with which to tend one at all, blaming everyone else who CAN’T for not doing so, forgetting that the reason they don’t tend theirs is because they don’t have said land to even start one AND it is priced out of reach by any honest work at the prevailing wages. Do keep in mind that in a collapse scenario, people could always take your advice to heart, and get themselves a garden to tend to by taking yours away. How would that make you feel?

If you really want outright collapse, keep supporting the status quo, because that is precisely where it will lead. The angry mob tactic is actually a last ditch effort to halt it, and is most often resorted to as such only when the masses find the status quo unlivable(I'm not referring to soccer riots or mob stupidity here, but genuine revolt, civil war), and the prospect of death no worse than their current existence, even if this tactic's chance of successfully initiating a positive change is low. At least it’s a chance. Of course, the leadership could always step aside, give up their power, and get out of the way too, and when they don’t, or when they even use violence on the rabble in effort to stop them, that isn’t the rabble’s fault.

The low and high roads are not what they seem at first glance. If we had real leaders, they would actually lead by setting an example and practicing what they preach, and not trying to manage and manipulate the rabble for their own profit, taking a cut out of every aspect of the rabbles’ collective existence, and inserting fees/restrictions in everything the rabble wants to do under the guise of the common good while the "leadership" extracts a hefty profit along the way.

You like to give these “leaders” a free pass because they were “elected” as a result of a series of rigged, filtered, and vetted processes that the average voter didn’t even have a say in, with candidates that the rabble may even find a closer match to its views locked off the ballot and out of the debates altogether, “leaders” that, even when replaced, result in no significant change in policy because there are special interests behind the scenes dictating the laws and regulations everyone else is forced to live by, special interests forcing the status quo on everyone regardless of whether they even want it, with or without their input.

You might find the following study enlightening:

https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf

JoeSixPack’s actual impact on the decisions of the “leaders” he “voted” for, is effectively zero, and choosing different ones wouldn’t have made any substantial difference. J6P is not to blame when these “leaders” behave like Pol Pot or Hitler, not perhaps unless you blame J6P for not using violence upon them when it is necessary to make their actions cease.

[Ibon]

Toecutter

Make many posts of smaller size if you want
Folks to read.

[The_Toecutter]

Unabomber have managed to kill few, so he is a murderer.
Should he manage to murder at least few thousands or preferably few millions and yet hold to power, very much like most of american presidents did between many other similar people, he would be a hero.
There are far more dangerous people out there comparing to TC or his hero Unabomber and yet they are revered idols of masses. Psycholgists and medical doctors advising sex change for few years old kids in the US and elsewhere are far more dangerous to society than people like Ted Kaczynsky (Unabomber) could ever possibly be and yet they are somehow tolerated and actually treated as authority in United States and many other places.
Besides other very destructive characteriscts in longer term they are also murderers because their actions will drive many to suicides and they are well aware of it and accept it as a possible outcome, all for ideological reasons.

Indeed. The easiest way to get away with murder is to do it in mass quantity with an official stamp of approval and steady supply of other peoples' money taken via threat of force without their consent.

People here may think I'm dangerous, but I'm not all that dangerous as far as people go. The only time I can ever think of harming another person was out of self defense, during their attempt to harm me after they landed the first blow. I'm not the violent type and I do not like violence as it is a probable means of getting hurt.

Odd how many find it acceptable to be ruled by those who commit mass murder, but then are offended at those who mention the possibility of violence against the murderers being carried out as a possible means to stop their murdering?

There are a number of very wealthy individuals making the policy decisions who do not understand the relationship of cause and effect very well, because they have used the largesse of the state to insulate themselves from the consequences of their actions.

I do not see this ending well unless this "leadership" is de-legitimized for being composed of the manipulative psychopaths and sociopaths that they are and a massive shift of consciousness in the public as a whole gives us something closer to a world where human beings don't have power over other human beings. History is an indicator that this is unlikely, but there existed cultures and civilizations that do prove this is possible to a much greater extent than we have today.

It would certainly make any powerdown scenario easier for the masses to live with, and may even go a long way towards minimizing or preventing a dieoff.

[The_Toecutter]

You can see Trump as a symbol of this in a way, as he was a protest candidate, sort of the equivalent of throwing the brick through a window. Many of his supporters knew he'd be a bull in a china shop but they felt that by allowing him to trash Washington it would "drain the swamp", as it were. That didn't work out that well, did it?

That's a classic issue of marketing vs. reality. Trump was little different from Hillary in the grand scheme of things. Both candidates stood for endless war, mass surveillance, grossly unequal wealth distribution, unchecked abuse of power, corruption, nepotism, cronyism, graft, empire, and had platforms that basically ensured the continued failed policies of previous administrations.

Trump *is* the swamp, just as his opponent was.

But that tends to be how society falls apart. The mob is a very blunt instrument. They suffer from dunning kruger insofar as they think they have a plan, but they really don't. And so all it does is sort of further the process of collapse. Really, outside of the American Revolution I can think of any other that was mounted by intellectuals who really had a firm grasp of what they wanted to build after the dust settled and actually achieved it in a way that pretty much lived up to the hype.

Blunt instruments can work on bullies quite effectively, regardless of the consequences.

These days people are filled with a lot of rage and magical thinking but not a lot of workable ideas.

Part of the problem is that if the workable idea doesn't profit the existing vested interests or if it even threatens their power/stature/position/future earnings, it is denounced by leadership as unworkable or unrealistic.

[EnergyUnlimited]

TC,
I do not perceive you as a dangerous person.
I am actually seeing some hope for future generations in people like you.
Why?
Because you can see current system as a defunct setup which need replacing with something else and yet, base on what you are writting, you are not a victim of leftist lunacy.

Now, why you will never agree wits ASG on anything?
Because ASG is much older than you are, has a lot to loose in possible turmoil and is in all probabilities incapable to defend himself with macheta if only due to his age.
So he needs stability which Bildenbergs and Rotschilds are providing, so he can die peacefuly in his mansion and enjoy meantime driving his electric car.

On the other hand, except of life in case of some mishap, you have nothing to loose.
For ASG any societal discontinuity would most likely change his life for the worse and for you the change could well be for the better.

Hence you are striving for change and you would not miss current elites once they are gone.
This change is coming. I am recently discussing it with Ibon.
The question is, would the change go via *high road*, eg organized authoritarian elimination of non desirables and intrusive leftist social engineering - because that is precisely how organized approach would look like, or perhaps via chaotic mob rule of the *low road* which would turn United States into a failed state.
IMO for a person in your particular position I would vote for a *low road* and not even think twice.
There are plenty of indications that US and Western Europe will succumb to a *low road*, so future should be bright for you.
Watch California going derelict and dysfunctional, very much like Rust Belt cities on the north.
You should also realize that both high and low roads are leading us to ruin but different people will reign those ruins in both cases.
High road will convert current elites to future aristocracy and low road will replace current elites with some other people who will duly become aristocracy of the future.
For those who have nothing to loose second option is more promissing.

[Plantagenet]

Greta Thunberg just denounced FACEBOOK for not censoring posts that disagree with her, lie about her or contain threats against her

www.aol.com/article/news/2019/10/26/greta-thunberg-issues-rallying-cry-against-facebook-over-lies-death-threats

I've never joined FACEBOOK and I'm sympathetic to Greta's complaints about people making posts attacking her on FACEBOOK. However, in our modern world there are malicious people out there who mainly use social media sites to attack or troll other people. We even have some people like that there at peakoil.com. However, I think that FACEBOOK already uses algorithms that screen out hate speech and of course we have our moderators here at peakoil.com who try to keep things civil here.

Its a shame that all on-line discussions aren't calm and rational and data-based, but alas that isn't what we get. Its hard to imagine there are people out there creepy enough to attack a 14 year old girl who only wants to save the world, but apparently there are.


Be strong, Greta.



Cheers!

[EnergyUnlimited]

Greta Thunberg just denounced FACEBOOK for not censoring posts that disagree with her, lie about her or contain threats against her

Snowflake.

[The_Toecutter]

Greta Thunberg just denounced FACEBOOK for not censoring posts that disagree with her, lie about her or contain threats against her

Look at her age and circumstances. I don't agree with her on this, but one must realize this has to be nothing short of frightening to her. I wouldn't expect her to react differently, but she's smart, and she may learn why free speech is important.

However, I think that FACEBOOK already uses algorithms that screen out hate speech

The thought that people believe that to be true is funny. Greta's complaints about the hate speech levied against her are prima facie evidence that this is not true. What Facebook, Google, and their ilk screen out is speech that contradicts the official narratives put forth by the state and speech that disagrees with the "mainstream" opinion that the so-called "news" likes to propagandize the public with, justifying this blatant censorship by calling it hate speech even though it isn't.

Its hard to imagine there are people out there creepy enough to attack a 14 year old girl who only wants to save the world, but apparently there are.

Anyone who finds that hard to imagine has been sheltered from the much larger world outside of whatever bubble they've lived in. That probably includes Greta, but she's still young and impressionable, and learning.

My generation has things really bad compared to previous ones(in spite of the official narrative and statistics saying things have never been better), but Greta's is going to have it even worse. It is clear from her speeches that she realizes this at an instinctual level. She has to have seen aspects of this phenomenon all around her to have orated the words she has.

[The_Toecutter]

Because you can see current system as a defunct setup which need replacing with something else and yet, base on what you are writting, you are not a victim of leftist lunacy.

Lunacy is not exclusively the domain of the left, either. Both left and right have good ideas here and there. Both also have absolutely dangerous ones too. Then there's a subset of those within the so-called center that promotes obvious totalitarianism under the guise of being "moderate" when they're only supporting ideas rehashed from the worst authoritarians in history of both the left and the right, updated for the current era, fallaciously thinking that by promoting both styles of authoritarianism it somehow makes them a "moderate". It's ALL lunacy. People trying to control and exploit other people for personal gain, using violence or the threat of violence to do it, and then gaslighting the victims by force feeding them propaganda that tells them they did it to themselves, refusing to acknowledge the rigged system humanity is living under that functionally filters most of the productive gains to a very small few who then continue to perpetuate the paradigm because it benefits them.

My own views probably align more with the left than they do the right. I mean the left in both a Jeffersonian and a Marxist sense(contradictory that may seem, I will elaborate as you read further), but these views are greatly opposed to the left in the modern SJW/cultural-Marxist sense. Terms to sort of describe my views may include left-wing anarchism, right libertarianism, libertarian socialism, and even paleo-conservatism, but given that I do not subscribe to any "ism" in particular, none of those are a perfect match for my political alignment and they all have tenets I disagree very heavily with. More than anything, I stand for self determination and individual autonomy, which in spite of the illusions of such saturating this society, are actually in very short supply here. Given the saturation of mass consumerism that is pretending to be rugged-individualism that is pervasive in the U.S. and being forced onto the rest of the world, a dose of collectivism that truly and honestly does have the common good in mind is actually needed to preserve self determination and individual autonomy, but it need not come from the state nor require heavy-handed authoritarianism, as that defeats the purpose entirely.

Now, why you will never agree wits ASG on anything?
Because ASG is much older than you are, has a lot to loose in possible turmoil and is in all probabilities incapable to defend himself with macheta if only due to his age.

Seems to me he grew up in a time where he could pay for college with no scholarships while working a low wage job, AND still have enough money left over to support himself. Back then, one could comfortably raise a family and afford their own home working that low wage job with just a few years of thrift and budgeting. A few decades of this, and one can retire.

Today, people struggle with 2 or 3 jobs just to keep a roof over their head, completing college a distant dream unless they take on crippling debt(even if they earn lots of scholarships, and it's either use them or lose them, which was the dilemma I faced after wasting my childhood working towards them), and should they finish college, they have to compete with those willing to work for 3rd world wages and rarely end up any better off than they would have been had they not even bothered. Forget about starting a family, unless you want a lifetime of debt and suffering, and a high probability that your offspring will have it even worse than you do, as just maintaining the rent, food on the table, and utilities results in a paycheck to paycheck existence as the debt burden increases, even when all the consumerist trappings we have today are deliberately shunned in the name of budget management(the consumerist trappings are generally really cheap these days, it's the necessities of existence that are dreadfully expensive relative to wages).

Between now and then, the amount of resources extracted and have been made available, have only increased, even on a per capita basis. Worker productivity has more than doubled. YET, the gains have not been shared with those who produced them, and those who produced said gains have seen their ability to afford the necessities drop over that time frame, all the while the talking heads on TV keep telling them things have never been better, because they have a bunch of "adjusted" numbers to say so, numbers which have very little resemblance to those numbers of the same name from decades ago regarding the methodology from which they were derived.

The result?

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/01/62-billionaires-own-as-much-as-half-of-humanity.html

If the wealthiest 62 billionaires on the planet decided to pool their resources, they could buy up every last thing owned by the 3.6 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity

https://www.forbes.com/sites/noahkirsch/2017/11/09/the-3-richest-americans-hold-more-wealth-than-bottom-50-of-country-study-finds/

Collectively, the billionaires on the Forbes 400 hold more wealth than the bottom 64% of America, "more people than the populations of Mexico and Canada combined."

https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/nov/14/worlds-richest-wealth-credit-suisse

The globe’s richest 1% own half the world’s wealth, according to a new report highlighting the growing gap between the super-rich and everyone else.

The world’s richest people have seen their share of the globe’s total wealth increase from 42.5% at the height of the 2008 financial crisis to 50.1% in 2017, or $140tn (£106tn), according to Credit Suisse’s global wealth report published on Tuesday.

It's truly grotesque. Joe Sixpack is NOT going to accept a powerdown if this is not addressed in the process. In fact, most of the ecological damage that has been rought and most of the mass consumption and waste has been a lifestyle forced upon Joe Sixpack in the service of the creation of this grotesque imbalance. It is the result not of people acting of their own free will as much as it is the result of deliberate policy decisions combined with mass manipulation of the public at large(ESPECIALLY through the public education system and marketing "industries").

Industrialization, while it has provided tremendous quality of life improvements overall in a material sense(while degrading quality of life in other areas), never was about the common good or truly improving the lot of humanity. The empirical data showing the distribution of its outputs demonstrates that. Industrialization is perpetuating our own demise in the process, with only a small group of people as the largest benefactor.

Industrialization was misused. I don't agree with Mr. Kaczynski's thesis in his manifesto, even though I agree with most of his points and even though many of his predictions have come to pass. Industrialization per se was not the problem. It is a tool, and nothing more.

So he needs stability which Bildenbergs and Rotschilds are providing, so he can die peacefuly in his mansion and enjoy meantime driving his electric car.

That stability is an illusion. The violence required to achieve it is being used to keep stability not for people like asg, but for people like the Bilderbergs and Rothschilds and even people a few rungs under them. The stability for people like asg is but a temporary byproduct of the elite's machinations. Once asg is one of the last remaining people with anything for them to strip away to further pad their own wealth, they will loot him just the same just as they are doing with everyone else, and probably claim people like him are at fault and it's the result of the consequences of his actions, while failing to acknowledge that their decisions set the conditions up to allow them to engage in this theft. I wonder if he'll still believe in the status quo as the best option if that comes to pass as his children or grandchildren are left destitute and looted of everything he spent his life working towards? It could be from anything... medical bills with greatly excessive profit margins charged relative to the real costs to provide it, improper filing of legal paperwork, accusation of a crime and the civil asset forfeiture and/or associated court costs or lawsuits(even if he committed no crime), increased inheritance taxes on the upper middle class while the loopholes for the super rich are maintained, ect. In all of these possible scenarios, people who don't work for a living and are already rich get a cut of it.

On the other hand, except of life in case of some mishap, you have nothing to loose.

I still have what remains of the family I grew up with, and that can just the same be lost in a BAU scenario as my circumstances so obviously demonstrate.

For ASG any societal discontinuity would most likely change his life for the worse and for you the change could well be for the better.

I'm not confident that this is true, but I'm thinking less of myself and more for future generations. I'd like for my species not to go extinct, and if the "low road" is necessary to prevent such an event, than so be it. We already know where the "high road" leads, and that is dictatorship and guaranteed suffering of everyone not a member of the aristocracy at best, and extinction at worst.

The question is, would the change go via *high road*, eg organized authoritarian elimination of non desirables and intrusive leftist social engineering - because that is precisely how organized approach would look like, or perhaps via chaotic mob rule of the *low road* which would turn United States into a failed state.

The "high road" has another form, a right-wing version that is every bit as authoritarian and state-organized, but under the guise of being "freedom" because it is private sector directed. It is the result of the merger of corporation and state. It is intrusive social engineering just the same, but also for corporate profit and not just for state largesse. That is the path the U.S. leadership is taking and the U.S. has been making very heavy strides down that path from Ronald Reagan onward to present, with so-called "liberals" and "Democrats" aiding and abetting it every step of the way during the times they hold the levers of power. Today we have Trump now running down that road.

https://www.surveillancecapitalism.com/

IMO for a person in your particular position I would vote for a *low road* and not even think twice.
There are plenty of indications that US and Western Europe will succumb to a *low road*, so future should be bright for you.
Watch California going derelict and dysfunctional, very much like Rust Belt cities on the north.
You should also realize that both high and low roads are leading us to ruin but different people will reign those ruins in both cases.

High road will convert current elites to future aristocracy and low road will replace current elites with some other people who will duly become aristocracy of the future.
For those who have nothing to loose second option is more promissing.

I see a different path. Loot the aristocrats and remove them from power, and there exists the possibility that we can have a powerdown scenario where the poorest of humanity would still see an increase in material living standard, and the middle class won't experience nearly as much pain as they would otherwise. This will require collective action, not just to ensure the elimination of existing aristocracy, but to prevent the concentration of wealth/power that would allow a new one to take its place.

This will require not a communist dictatorship, but a dismantling of the oversized state that the aristocrats have been using to enable their theft of the productive output of the rest of humanity, a dismantling so thorough that a communist dictatorship would be rendered not only impossible, but to the dustbin of history where it rightfully belongs along with the large-scale exploitative industrial capitalism that it was created as a response to. It would entail a mixed approach, parts of Thomas Jefferson, parts of Karl Marx, parts of Lysander Spooner, with both economic fairness AND individual liberty as driving goals, and neither one chosen over the other, but recognized as being interlinked with each other. By necessity, such a paradigm would require a limited government directly subordinate to the people or even no government at all, but also require that all of the major industrial production facilities are collectively owned(which may even become enabled with a technofix solution given where 3D printing is heading, without requiring a shot to be fired), while individual people are left alone to produce things on their own properties as they see fit. It would require that individual people are allowed to own private property, free and clear, without a state able to charge rent in the form of taxes, with limitations to prevent the mass hoarding of private property by those who are better off. It would require honest money as the U.S. once had, and an abolition of the Federal Reserve and the money as debt paradigm. It would require that individuals are allowed to freely transact with the presence of a free market and little or possibly even no government intervention at the small/local scale, but that does not necessarily mean the society itself must allow large-scale industrial capitalism that privatizes the profits for the capitalist and socializes the externalities onto everyone else.

Caitlin Johnstone has a lot of good ideas, tangential to this rant of mine and to this topic:

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/10/15/on-psychopathy-and-power/

[Ibon]

Toecutter, there is much you write that is true.

Here is the painful part however. So what? Nothing of this truth so well understood is going to help you. Or help any of us. The game is rigged. Corruption is rampant. The little guy gets fucked.

None of this in any way is going to help you in your quest for gainful employment or to help you distance yourself from the effects of this rigged system.

Writing long diatribes will not get you a better job. It only embeds you more into the sense of injustice.

In fact it will most likely prevent you from ever integrating enough in the system to try to extract some wealth for yourself which will be necessary if you want some independence.

Your wrapping up your identity as victim. And spending many many a long hour reinforcing this narrative. Time you could be spending rendering into Caesar what is Caesars and moving on.

Ask yourself when you wake up every morning what is more interesting, looking for gainful employment or coming on to po.com and writing a 2 hour screed over how fucked up every thing is. Where do you see your creativity flowing? Where is the juice?

If the juice and creativity is not looking for work, not trying to distance yourself from the system, not trying to build a little wealth to carve our a bit of independence, then your trapped. If the juice isn't there for this then you only have yourself to blame.

If the juice and creativity is all about writing these long screeds on a forum then your stuck.

Understanding what is fucked up does not liberate you from the rigged system. It enslaves you more if your identity is thus wrapped up in it. That is what I read in your prose more than anything else.

There were times in my past I felt similar. What helped me break out was understanding that freedom comes from disengaging being in relationship with that which is dysfunctional. Be in it but not of it. Rise above. Sometimes I think of those immigrants that come on our shores with not a penny in their pockets. They do not know anything about the injustices that are locally causing the system to be rigged. They start from scratch, singularly focused, saving every penny, living frugally, and slowly through the decades carve out a bit of independence. You can envy their freedom? Their ignorance. Their ignorance of the rigged system that allows them to singularly focus on building a bit of wealth while standing outside.

Your are way too deep inside. It's fucking with your head.....

[Plantagenet]

Industrialization, while it has provided tremendous quality of life improvements overall in a material sense(while degrading quality of life in other areas), never was about the common good or truly improving the lot of humanity.

Its naive to imagine that anything is ever about "the common good of humanity."

Every religious and political and social and economic and scientific movement are done for the self-interest of the people promoting them. Now....some of these things do have incredible social benefits but in almost every case it begins with self-interest. Certainly every political groups is mainly interesting in taking power for themselves. Even the extremist movements that shout the loudest about being for the people....groups like the socialists and communists, often create societies where the party members are on top and the rest of the country is impoverished....as we see in North Korea and Venezuela.

There is no perfect society.

There is no political ideology that has all the answers.

Rather then perfection, the best we can hope for is an "open society," where people are free enough to pursue their own interests. And the closest we come to that is in our western style mixed economies existing today in the US, Canada, western Europe, etc.

The "high road" has another form, a right-wing version that is every bit as authoritarian and state-organized, but under the guise of being "freedom" because it is private sector directed. It is the result of the merger of corporation and state. It is intrusive social engineering just the same, but also for corporate profit and not just for state largesse. That is the path the U.S. leadership is taking.....

Actually, you are describing the left wing version being taken by China.

I see a different path. Loot the aristocrats and remove them from power, and there exists the possibility that we can have a powerdown scenario where the poorest of humanity would still see an increase in material living standard.....

The poorest of humanity are already seeing immense increases in their material living standards under the current globalist system. But thats not a good thing.....Adding billions of people to the global consumerist culture has just jacked up our global CO2 emissions to the point that global warming is literally burning up the forests of the world.


The problem we face isn't improving †he lot of the world's poor....it's REDUCING the CO2, SP6, CH4, NO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions that are inevitably produced as societies grow wealthier.


Cheers!

[asg70]

Its a shame that all on-line discussions aren't calm and rational and data-based

Yeah, you haven't contributed any hyperbole...ever. Your halo is unblemished.

Trump was little different from Hillary in the grand scheme of things

I know it comforts you to think that, but it's not really true.

Blunt instruments can work on bullies quite effectively, regardless of the consequences.

But what happens AFTER the uprising? The treatment is worse than the disease.

Part of the problem is that if the workable idea doesn't profit

The problems of this world are far deeper than your fixation on class-warfare, Toecutter.

Sure, there's the rich and powerful, but then there's everyone else who ASPIRE to be rich and powerful. Guess what the rich and powerful do. They consume. And the planet suffers as a result.

Because ASG is much older than you are, has a lot to loose in possible turmoil and is in all probabilities incapable to defend himself with macheta if only due to his age.

That's one way to spin things. The other could be that those who are most eager for revolution are losers who are more interested in taking from others than making anything of themselves. Obviously the truth lies in the middle but coming at things from a perspective of extreme class warfare is not the answer.

The more Toecutter relates his story the more I see someone who is seething with anger not due to the world not meeting the challenge of peak oil or global warming, but simply due to envy.

leftist social engineering

And YOUR problem is that you also aren't interested in mitigating peak oil or global warming. You have firmly placed leftism as the root of all evil. And believe me, I'm no fan of extreme left overreach, but this too is a sideshow compared to what's looming.

Everyone seems to want to just piggyback their own ideological baggage where it doesn't belong.

Today, people struggle with 2 or 3 jobs

I read shit like this and I can't help but turn back to Ibon's many diatribes about the Overshoot predator. This whole then vs. now bullshit is ignorant of the larger tableau of history. Sure, in many respects the US is post-peak prosperity in terms of wage-gaps, cost of healthcare, real-estate, and higher education. But compare that to, let's say, the 1800s prior to germ theory, with no child labor laws, robber barons, and multiple bubbles poppes with bank-runs where people lost all their saving (no FDIC), or having to survive through the multiple world-wars of the 20th century. The 3rd world is still clamoring to skip over the border to the US to the point where immigration is a chronic political hot-poato and you still want to portray the US as such a terrible place? Worse than it used to be a few decades ago, yes, terrible, no. What you see as raison d'être to start a revolution seems to come from more of an entitlement-mentality.

The problems that are brewing are not related to class-warfare. They're existential. Ya know, that whole overshoot and die off thing. Malthus, ya know? In such a world, there ain't gonna BE any higher education anymore and you'll be far more concerned with where your next meal is coming from than whether you can still obtain the 1950s ideal of the white picket fence and the 2-car garage.

Suffice to say, you know where I place most of the blame on the country becoming corrupt? THE AMERICAN VOTER!!!!! Reagan sold the right on the myth of trickle-down economics and it has now permanently embedded itself in the skulls of anyone sitting under a red pixel in the US demographic map. They continue to vote against their best interests again and again. The country wasn't stolen. It was GIVEN AWAY because the american voter is DUMP AS ROCKS, which is why we have dummy presidents like GW and Trump labelled "populist". They're populist because the american voter is, pound for pound, stupid to the point of being incapable of running a functional democracy (OK, democratic republic). No conspiracies needed.

If you can't accept the necessity of having to live with less and are still feeling entitled to your piece of classic 20th century prosperity I'd say you are ultimately fighting a losing battle.

How much this sort of more banal discourse of left right and capitalism vs. communism can dominate a site like this is a function of how close doom really is vs. the usual ebb and flow of politics.

It's truly grotesque. Joe Sixpack is NOT going to accept a powerdown

That's just it. NOBODY is going to accept a powerdown, period, not even you.

How many times have I called you out that you're in the anger stage of grief???

Doom is a dilemma, not a fixable problem. You haven't articulated a way for us to get through the population bottleneck. All you've done is rattle of a list of class-based grievances. That's it. You're devoid of ideas other than busting shit up in an orgy of violence ala Joker.

I'd like for my species not to go extinct, and if the "low road" is necessary to prevent such an event, than so be it.

So how long before you start blowing up cell phone towers ala Derrick Jensen? I'm telling you, man, with these long diatribes like this it seems like you have a lot of time on your hands which will eventually go into pressure-cooker bombs or lighting yourself on fire at the steps of the local city hall? I know extremism when I read it and I'm not going to validate you as you keep sliding towards some tragic ending.

Look, few if any here are happy with the status quo. What we dislike about it and what we'd like to see happen are gonna be different. But what I don't want to see is the few posters of this site to devolve to the point where we're openly rallying and brainstorming towards any lawbreaking activity. That's where I draw the line. I don't feel it's unreasonable to want to walk the streets without maniacs rioting with a false sense of self-righteousness. If you want the world to go up in flames ala Children of Men then I'll be one of the ones hoping the tanks come steamroll over your ass.

[rockdoc123]

So how long before you start blowing up cell phone towers ala Derrick Jensen? I'm telling you, man, with these long diatribes like this it seems like you have a lot of time on your hands which will eventually go into pressure-cooker bombs or lighting yourself on fire at the steps of the local city hall? I know extremism when I read it and I'm not going to validate you as you keep sliding towards some tragic ending.

It ends up being a death spiral....buying into this sort of thinking can't help but come across in job applications and job interviews. People who are hiring don't do so in a fish bowl, they search the internet where you are less hidden than you might think and they talk to people who have been hiring at other companies. So someone discovers you have an attitude they don't want in their employ and they don't hire you and you then blame them as just being part of the elite who are ganging up against you and everyone else. Having technical skills are only a part of the ingredients that recruiters look for. It's hard enough to run a company without populating it with crazed conspiracy theorists advocating the violent overthrow of your primary customers.

He is well on the path to Starving Lion mad....just with less humor in his meanderings I"m afraid.