[Timo]

Capitalism as with all systems is a function of objective forces so in essence, its something of a conundrum as far as normative notions go.

LoL, whatever that means I think it misses my point.

We are all capitalists as long as we choose to continue operating in the system.
I don't see anyone in this thread volunteering their way out.
Playing the keyboard as Rome burns, as it were.
So stop accumulating already

So, by this logic, preppers who accumulate food, ammo and guns, and other tools requisite to survive the apocalypse are the ultimate capitalists???

Where's the profit in that?

Unless simple survival can be considered capital. Time (alive) is money, after all. Of course, that's also relative to the supply side of the equation. If life is in short supply, then it's worth quite a bit. Life now, in our current state of the world????

I won't attempt to answer that.

[Pops]

hmm, donno

I'll say a stocked pantry is apolitical (aeconomic?)

To rephrase, if the root evil of capitalism is accumulation, it seems the "savior" would be spartanism, voluntary frugality, disengagement from "the market" altogether; both on the production and consumption side.

In my experience, the hardest of my 5 rules to follow is the first one: don't buy.

[Timo]

HA! I don't buy because i don't have any money!!!

That's the easiest rule to follow!

[Pops]

I've told people that my plan was to learn how to get by on less income and so far I've been halfway successful — the less income part!

[Timo]

By that logic, you're Scott Walker's dream! A true American Peon.

Who needs a living wage? Just make do with less, like cat food for dinner. Work longer hours if you want Temptations for dessert!

[Ibon]

By that logic, you're Scott Walker's dream! A true American Peon.

Who needs a living wage? Just make do with less, like cat food for dinner. Work longer hours if you want Temptations for dessert!

We have parallel problems that are going to create great tensions. On one hand everyone should follow Pops plan and learn to get by with less. But if the inequities in the division of wealth continue and if the corporate power structure continues to receive more government bailouts and welfare and tax breaks and subsidies than the working class then it is very difficult to educate and sell to the masses the msg of austerity and zero growth and steady state and sustainable economy and an alternative to capitalism.

An enlightened government would tell their citizens the truth about austerity in times of a contracting resource base and climate change and over population at the same time as they truly to address the income inequities.

These are the exact policies that will never elect a politician......

At least at the moment.

[evilgenius]

I was watching a Ted talk last night where this man was making a point about addiction. He brought up the old rats in a cage example, where almost all rats given only a choice between two water spouts, one regular water and one laced with a drug, will choose the one laced with a drug. Then he said that when researchers gave the rats a rat heaven to live in, where they weren't deprived and could have anything they wanted, they almost all ignored the drug.

The problem with capitalism is not that it is like evolution in that it is so great at discovering what succeeds. Nor that it tends to put resources behind what succeeds. The problem with it is that nothing about the philosophical direction of it is human. Rather it is composed of what the voice of money demands. Right now that voice is quite short-term in nature and argues for only one type of investor, one which doesn't care too much about the long-term. It imposes the cage upon us.

We use the idea of incorporation in order to allow people to take risks. It lets them fail at the particular endeavor they thought they could succeed at and when they do the endeavor goes bankrupt, not them. As long as corporations are privately held I don't see any problem with that, assuming they aren't allowed by special interest laws to remain privately held when, by all reasonable measures, they ought to go public. However, once we start allowing more successful corporations to offer shares in their ownership that is where the chasm develops. Unless you own a majority or an interest large enough to be considered substantial what you want doesn't matter. The only vote you have is to sell. If you think about it you will see that this also launches one into the market state of mind considering ownership. People don't sell because they disagree with the philosophy of a corporation, but because they think the share price is going to go down. They buy, also, because they think the price will go up. Philosophy is largely unimportant. What you get as a result of that is a disconnection from the fact that business is in business to supply a want or a need that its potential customers have. You get a lot of generation of want and need in order to keep the system going. Again, the cage.

I mentioned a solution to this in my earlier post. It doesn't mean doing away with corporations. It means creating a change to them which ensures that a long-term voice is present and has power all its own. Not, incidentally, ultimate power. I aimed this solution at an artificially intelligent future because such a future is one in which the efforts of capitalism could become so virtually engaged as to begin to leave the vast majority of humanity behind. In this sense I call it a human solution. It also, however, applies to the basic unbalanced dystopian vision that capitalism operates under today. There is no reason that our monetary way of living life has to be so winner take all.

I might additionally add that in order to make the switch we would have to leave judgment behind. Perhaps a kind of truth and reconciliation might be appropriate, but making people pay for being lucky and doing the same things that the unlucky would have done in their place seems ludicrous to me. What you really have to do is get out of the cage and in doing so take everybody else with you, not see how many you can pile up underneath you on the way out.

[Timo]

By that logic, you're Scott Walker's dream! A true American Peon.

Who needs a living wage? Just make do with less, like cat food for dinner. Work longer hours if you want Temptations for dessert!

We have parallel problems that are going to create great tensions. On one hand everyone should follow Pops plan and learn to get by with less. But if the inequities in the division of wealth continue and if the corporate power structure continues to receive more government bailouts and welfare and tax breaks and subsidies than the working class then it is very difficult to educate and sell to the masses the msg of austerity and zero growth and steady state and sustainable economy and an alternative to capitalism.

An enlightened government would tell their citizens the truth about austerity in times of a contracting resource base and climate change and over population at the same time as they truly to address the income inequities.

These are the exact policies that will never elect a politician......

At least at the moment.

CORPORATE AUSTERITY!!!!

I like the ring of that! Maybe we should get the Occupy movement back together again to preach that message to those who demand it from everyone but themselves.

[Ibon]

I was watching a Ted talk last night where this man was making a point about addiction. He brought up the old rats in a cage example, where almost all rats given only a choice between two water spouts, one regular water and one laced with a drug, will choose the one laced with a drug. Then he said that when researchers gave the rats a rat heaven to live in, where they weren't deprived and could have anything they wanted, they almost all ignored the drug.

The problem with capitalism is not that it is like evolution in that it is so great at discovering what succeeds. Nor that it tends to put resources behind what succeeds. The problem with it is that nothing about the philosophical direction of it is human. Rather it is composed of what the voice of money demands. Right now that voice is quite short-term in nature and argues for only one type of investor, one which doesn't care too much about the long-term. It imposes the cage upon us.

Greatly enjoyed your post. Thank you.

I also read the rat study a while back which I think is an excellent comparison to many aspects of high consumption suburban lifestyles especially as it is practiced today with the vast majority of participants so deeply in debt that the "cage" is quite a literal description. The rat study is further validated when you see the disproportionate usage of drugs, both legal and illegal, along with anti depressants that keep the participants able to cope inside their cages. Other addictions like obesity and shopping are further manifestations of how this lifestyle is not nurturing the human being and like the rat one searches out addicting compensations.

Yesterday there was a report broad casted on current Chinese culture and a chinese sociologist was interviewed about internet addiction with youth. He mentioned that the current middle class in China is suffering from a broken family relationship where the single most important cultural value today in China is making money and this quest is breaking down the family values where many children are cast adrift from their parents and become addicted to video games.

It doesn't really matter what your religious or cultural heritage is, this quest for money seems to have the power to trump all cultural traditions and humanity seems vulnerable to creating this "cage" quite easily.

We live in a world where most of humanity is blindly following this script of chasing money. Of course it is symbol for security and status which seem to be two conditions where neither seems to ever get satiated. In fact, the more wealthy the higher your fences and the more you feel insecure. Once you chase status there is always someone you are chasing after with a bigger home, fancier car.

It is a very small number of us who attained some material success and said, enough is enough, I will sacrifice more wealth and money and security and risk it all to escape the cage and do something more wholesome with ones life.

Why are these choices so difficult for both the individual and the collective.

After all, you just have to look at the stars or go into any native eco system to be reminded that this existence is a one shot miracle and you want to waste it living in a self imposed cage?

We are lost in a prison of our own device........ Jim Morrison....

I mentioned a solution to this in my earlier post. It doesn't mean doing away with corporations. It means creating a change to them which ensures that a long-term voice is present and has power all its own. Not, incidentally, ultimate power.
I might additionally add that in order to make the switch we would have to leave judgment behind. Perhaps a kind of truth and reconciliation might be appropriate,

The same question I posed to AD might be appropriate to you as well. Do you see such a long term self preservation solution possible without the consequences of human overshoot acting as a catalyst to break the current resilient but dysfunctional economic system that puts us in these cages?

[americandream]

Capitalism as with all systems is a function of objective forces so in essence, its something of a conundrum as far as normative notions go.

LoL, whatever that means I think it misses my point.

We are all capitalists as long as we choose to continue operating in the system.
I don't see anyone in this thread volunteering their way out.
Playing the keyboard as Rome burns, as it were.
So stop accumulating already

What would I achieve in retreating to prep when there will be nothing to prep for. Dont you get it. Unless capital is halted before it collapses, waiting for it to collapse will take us to the edge of climate flip and beyond. There is nothing to prep for.

If the system is not halted before it further destabilises our climate, the games up for all life on this planet and it has to be stopped dead.....by a totally new culture. That is the only option we have left. Things are a lot more dire than you realise.....Starving Lion has posted a very prescient article on revisionist Chinas toxic nightmare.....as we move into austerity and consolidation, those practices will be exported worldwide as capitalists fight over the last scraps.

[Pops]

What would I achieve in retreating to prep when there will be nothing to prep for. Dont you get it.

...If the system is not halted before it further destabilises our climate, the games up for all life on this planet and it has to be stopped dead

None of my posts say "prep" — each of my last few post says stop consuming, challenging the pontificators to actually do something, volunteer to de-capitalize, quit the system — not just pose & pontificate online.

What part don't you get?

[evilgenius]

The same question I posed to AD might be appropriate to you as well. Do you see such a long term self preservation solution possible without the consequences of human overshoot acting as a catalyst to break the current resilient but dysfunctional economic system that puts us in these cages?

Thanks for listening. That's all anybody can hope for.

Yeah, I do. Beyond the current hullabaloo concerning wage and wealth inequality, which are forces that hold a lot of promise for change, there is the example of what has gone on in management philosophy over the last several decades. When my dad was young he once worked at a mine where he was told by somebody he worked with what had happened before he got there (maybe this actually happened to my dad, but I can't honestly remember). The mine owner had come out and told the manager to line up all of the workers by the gate, then fire every other one of them. He dared not fire every one because then he would lose the collective knowledge of the workforce. He did what he could get away with. My dad told me that the owner said to do this because for every one fired there were two or three outside the gate looking for work. My dad was a kid during The Depression, so this probably happened then and he heard about it after he got out of the war and started working.

Now, it isn't like forms of this aren't still present today, just look at what happened at the NYSE when they went down the other day and it turns out they had fired too many technical people and had a really hard time getting the exchange back up in a reasonable time after they tried to roll out some updates that failed. Management still tries to force things, but the school of management, what is taught and is influencing minds at a deep level is much more understanding of give and take. Perhaps this is the result of having to deal with periods of lower unemployment and, therefore, incorporate a more conciliatory approach within their framework, but I don't think so. I think the same thing that facilitates political correctness, the best reasons for it that is, are at work here. Humanity is growing up. Yes, it is a pity that climate change is actually happening so fast, but, when you get right down to it, answers that don't come from the heart don't seem to tread water. We need answers from a grown up and caring humanity. Let's just hope we can get them in time.

[kublikhan]

Now they are just designed as a virtual world where no matter how poorly you achieve eventually you make it to the end goal. The only competitive games left are the multi-player games.

So true. Unfortunately this "everyone is a winner" crap is even finding it's way into multiplayer. In Starcraft 2, they removed the ability to see your number of wins/losses. Now only wins are displayed. "Even in multiplayer, everyone is a winner!"

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty - Patch 1.3.0
* Loss counts are no longer displayed in Profile and Ladder pages for players below Master League.
Comments:
Wow really? Removing losses? How much more dumbed down and kiddy friend can you make this game? Losing is a part of the game and life, get over it.
...
No win/loss ratio is the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. This is supposed to help the biggest e-gaming presence on the planet how exactly? By standing out as the only sport without losses? I hope somebody gets fired for this..

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty - Patch 1.3.0

[Quinny]

Not entirely off-topic but Eric Cantona is my favourite ever footballer!

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/nov/20/eric-cantona-bank-protest-campaign

[kublikhan]

I disagree with AD on the idea people are rational.

You have to remember two things about the markets. One is, they are made up of very sharp and sophisticated people. These are the greatest brains in the world. The second thing you have to remember is that financial markets — to use the common word — are driven by sentiment.

Bird and Fortune - Subprime Crisis

[americandream]

I disagree with AD on the idea people are rational.

You have to remember two things about the markets. One is, they are made up of very sharp and sophisticated people. These are the greatest brains in the world. The second thing you have to remember is that financial markets — to use the common word — are driven by sentiment.

Bird and Fortune - Subprime Crisis

The markets are driven by common commercial principles. I trade them. Not sentiment. Finding those levels is not easy and by and large most players other than hard technicians are either subconciously in tune with the markets momentum or simply gambling.

[americandream]

What would I achieve in retreating to prep when there will be nothing to prep for. Dont you get it.

...If the system is not halted before it further destabilises our climate, the games up for all life on this planet and it has to be stopped dead

None of my posts say "prep" — each of my last few post says stop consuming, challenging the pontificators to actually do something, volunteer to de-capitalize, quit the system — not just pose & pontificate online.

What part don't you get?

If that is your intent, my apologies. Yes....one can withdraw and if enough of us did so, that would precipitate the sort of catalyst that Ibon no doubt contemplates. Alternatively one can use participation with a catalysing objective. The two are not mutually exclusive.

[Ibon]

[ Yes....one can withdraw and if enough of us did so, that would precipitate the sort of catalyst that Ibon no doubt contemplates.

Not quite. The catalyst I refer to are not of human agency as you suggest here. They are the natural consequences of human overshoot. They might then catalyze a response which would then be of human agency.

Alternatively one can use participation with a catalysing objective. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Where is the spark here? What rational way can you create a catalyst to galvanize the collective into evolving? I see no mechanisms here except your reference that you have a lot of work to do and it will take about a year?

We'll probably be around. Let's wait and see.

[kublikhan]

The markets are driven by common commercial principles. I trade them. Not sentiment. Finding those levels is not easy and by and large most players other than hard technicians are either subconciously in tune with the markets momentum or simply gambling.

That video is a satire. You should see what he says next. Just trying to lighten up the mood a bit

[americandream]

The markets are driven by common commercial principles. I trade them. Not sentiment. Finding those levels is not easy and by and large most players other than hard technicians are either subconciously in tune with the markets momentum or simply gambling.

That video is a satire. You should see what he says next. Just trying to lighten up the mood a bit

Ill try and get to it. My day tends to be pretty chocka and I can just about slot in posting here.