I think we're f**ked.  :-\\

I think we're f**ked.  :-\\


We are.  Don't let anybody tell you different. 

Look at the Internet.  Sites like this one.  Facebook.  I could have written a short story in 1986 about how in 2013 nobody will have flesh friends anymore.  We would all sit isolated at home and talk to friends on computer networks we never meet in person. 

THX-1138 -- This is your brain on Prozac

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fwwT5jp-dA

I have a book reccomendation for you, Belmont. Its called "The End of History and the Last Man" by Francis Fukuyama. It answers pretty much everything you wanted to know about democracy, consumerism, happiness and human rights.

It sounds like you could really benefit from giving it a read.

I think we're f**ked.  :-\\


How?  ???

I have a book reccomendation for you, Belmont. Its called "The End of History and the Last Man" by Francis Fukuyama. It answers pretty much everything you wanted to know about democracy, consumerism, happiness and human rights.

It sounds like you could really benefit from giving it a read.


From what I know of Belmont so far, (s)he is pretty much against capitalism and Fukuyama's thesis that liberal democracy is the end point of our sociopolitical evolution probably wouldn't suit someone who has socialist beliefs.

From what I know of Belmont so far, (s)he is pretty much against capitalism and Fukuyama's thesis that liberal democracy is the end point of our sociopolitical evolution probably wouldn't suit someone who has socialist beliefs.


Doesn't mean I wouldn't read it.  :)

Fukuyama has since retracted his opinion about capitalism being an end-of-history utopia. (Although perusing his wikipedia page, his reasons for doing so strike me as a little odd...) Alan Greenspan also I think has said that his original take on free-market capitalism was overly optimistic.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/23/AR2008102300193.html

"You found that your view of the world, your ideology was not right, it was not working?" said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), the committee chairman.

"Absolutely, precisely," Greenspan said. "You know, that's precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well."

It was particularly cheeky for Fukuyama to borrow this "end-of-history" concept, which was originally a Marxist idea that eventually the communist revolution would so thoroughly vanquish class difference to such an extent that government would no longer be needed, because the workers of the world would become so enlightened they wouldn't need to be governed, they would govern themselves. I remember noticing that at the time and thinking, you know, authoritarian communists and free-market capitalists really aren't that different, because capitalists also harbor certain utopian beliefs: mainly that the free market will somehow magically address broader social ills and top-down social engineering is never necessary. really, that to me is a lot like the communist superstate, with the only substitution being that market exchange, rather than the indominable proletariat worker, is the thing with magical utopian properties.

so it's probably not a coincidence that the US is suffering from the same things that brought down the USSR: government corruption, crippling debt caused by military overreach, ideological and social decline... it's probably also not a coincidence that the biggest up-and-coming country right now, china, is a very counterintuitive fusion of old-school communism with radically deregulated capitalism, a combination you wouldn't think would be possible.

all this to say, I don't actually think capitalism and communism are that different.

I have always believed that one person's Utopia is another person's Dystopia.  And here can be an example of extremes (as comparison, not a judgement on either side's beliefs).

Imagine a world where everything is taken care of.  All food, housing, medical care, education (including college) is paid for by the state.  Everybody has a job, and all needs are met.

Now to some, that sounds like paradise.  However, it also fits a great deal of life in the former Soviet Union.

Then you have a world where everybody is responsible for their own actions.  Rob somebody, and you risk getting shot because odds are they are all armed.  You have to work or starve, because nobody is responsible for you but yourself.  You advance as far as you can based upon your own merits and abilities, not because the Government is giving you a hand up because you are of Myopian descent.  Government takes no taxes, each local community takes care of business as they see fit, surviving or failing as a community based on how well they take care of their residents.

Wow, perfect Liberterian paradise.  To bad that form of Utopia to most people is a step away from anarchy.

I personally reject any kind of "Utopian" fantasy, because what fits that definition for one person is a dystopia for another.  A world without guns, awesome.  But if not for my own gun, my wife would have been badly beaten if not killed 3 years ago when she interrupted 3 kids with metal pipes who tried to take her car.

Myself, I reject extreems of both sides.  And as with utopias, I am sure that many people think we are living in one now, not the dystopia that some see.

I have always believed that one person's Utopia is another person's Dystopia.  And here can be an example of extremes (as comparison, not a judgement on either side's beliefs).

Imagine a world where everything is taken care of.  All food, housing, medical care, education (including college) is paid for by the state.  Everybody has a job, and all needs are met.

Now to some, that sounds like paradise.  However, it also fits a great deal of life in the former Soviet Union.



In the Soviet Union people stood in line for hours to get bread and toilet paper.  The Soviets were notorious for their black market economy, which they needed basic necessities because the state was doing such a piss-poor job.  Doesn't sound like my kind of a utopia.  However, full employment and state-funded university sound pretty good to me.  They'd make a us a damn sight more competitive in the world than we are now!

Lol you Miserable lot! Doomsayers are not productive to the human race in any way, shape or form. The world is not yet 'fudgeed', it is not ending, dystopian, doomed or otherwise.

There are problems in the world, of course, but there are people actively trying to come up with solutions, rather than weeping about the state of the world today.

Thank you
:D

Lol you Miserable lot! Doomsayers are not productive to the human race in any way, shape or form. The world is not yet 'fudgeed', it is not ending, dystopian, doomed or otherwise.

There are problems in the world, of course, but there are people actively trying to come up with solutions, rather than weeping about the state of the world today.

Thank you
:D
I think the "doomsayers" are actually the ones who solve the problems. We didn't have a massive computer crash in 2000, not because there was nothing to it, but because the "doomsayers" howled about it until something was done about it. or consider climate change: if we listen to the deniers we won't do anything about it, and we'll be screwed in a few years or decades. if we do do something about it, it'll be because the "doomsayers" were such gadflies about it.

same thing with cultural decay, orwellian overreach, etc.: it's the "doomsayers" combatting that, not the complacent types sitting around someone somewhere is actively trying to come up with a solution.

In the Soviet Union people stood in line for hours to get bread and toilet paper.  The Soviets were notorious for their black market economy, which they needed basic necessities because the state was doing such a piss-poor job.  Doesn't sound like my kind of a utopia.  However, full employment and state-funded university sound pretty good to me.  They'd make a us a damn sight more competitive in the world than we are now!


I think the problem was the Soviet Union was too large and the infrastructure sucked. I also think the idea of a command line economy from the top gives the state too much power, not too sound libertarian or anything because I'm definitely not a libertarian but I don't think the failure of the Soviet Union proves all forms of communism are bunk and unworkable.

In the Soviet Union people stood in line for hours to get bread and toilet paper.  The Soviets were notorious for their black market economy, which they needed basic necessities because the state was doing such a piss-poor job.  Doesn't sound like my kind of a utopia.  However, full employment and state-funded university sound pretty good to me.  They'd make a us a damn sight more competitive in the world than we are now!



Don't know becuae that would scare me

I think the problem was the Soviet Union was too large and the infrastructure sucked. I also think the idea of a command line economy from the top gives the state too much power, not too sound libertarian or anything because I'm definitely not a libertarian but I don't think the failure of the Soviet Union proves all forms of communism are bunk and unworkable.
I think communism works pretty well in agrarian cultures without a lot of infrastructure. It would do wonders for Somalia and Afghanistan, two countries in dire need of atheism and guaranteed employment. it worked well in vietnam. It didn't work in china and the soviet union because those countries are far too large and wealthy.

Communism is totally different from democratic socialism, 'course.