Communism. Good or bad. What do you really know about Communism?

[Wendigo]

Originally Posted by otokonomidori

I quite like "planify" - Shakespeare was always creating new English words so why not xyzde69.

Shakespeare was a Communist
All's Well That Ends Well

[Hiwi]

Lived in USSR 1969-1991.
Don't like that bullshit (

[Arturo2nd]

Originally Posted by xyzde69

So. Why not planning that NOW ?

The global elites and their political lackeys prefer to enjoy their wealth and privilege now and pretend that the looming catastrophe is not happening. Those that do accept the scientific reality either figure that they will be dead by then and/or there is nothing that can be done to change the current course in the face the overwhelming stupidity of their fellow human beings. Remember, there are those who are still insisting that the world is flat.

[Roubignol]

"When I was a young man growing up in New York City I refused to pledge allegiance to the flag.
Of course I was sent to the principal’s office and he asked me: “Why don’t you want to pledge allegiance? Everybody does!”
I said: “Everybody once believed the Earth was flat, but that doesn’t make it so.”
I explained that America owed everything it has to other cultures and other nations and that I would rather pledge allegiance to the Earth and everyone on it.
Needless to say it wasn’t long before I left school entirely and I set up a lab in my bedroom. There I began to learn about science and nature. I realized then that the universe is governed by laws and that the human being, along with society itself, was not exempt from these laws.
Then came the crash of 1929 which began what we now call “The Great Depression”.
I found it difficult to understand why millions were out of work, homeless, starving, while all the factories were sitting there; the resources were unchanged. I was then that I realized that the rules of the economic game were inherently invalid.
Shortly after, came World War II where various nations took turns systematically destroying each other. I later calculated that all the destruction and wasted resources spent on that war could have easily provided for every human need on the planet.
Since that time, I have watched humanity set the stage of its own extinction. I have watched as the precious finite resources are perpetually wasted and destroyed in the name of profit and free markets.
I have watched the social values of society be reduced into a base artificiality of materialism and mindless consumption. And I have watched as the monetary powers control the political structure of supposedly free societies.
I’m 94 years old now. And I’m afraid my disposition is the same as it was 75 years ago.
This shit’s got to go."

https://youtu.be/W2FPZrbYWK0?t=5m53s

[Wendigo]

Just thought I'd pop in and share this if the assumption is that if one person thinks something is right and appears to be sincere about it then it must be true.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXAJ185zsjc

Dontcha just love papier-mâché communists

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by bowlinggreen

I think that within 200 years there will be a global societal collapse that will dwarf the implosion of Rome.

Here's the thing, though -- Rome didn't really "implode".

The capacity of people to muddle through should never be underestimated.

The "barbarians" do sack Rome-- but what comes next? In Italy, its the government of Odoacer and then Theodoric the Great, arguably as skillful as any Roman Emperor, ruling over plenty of people whose grandfathers had been Romans, and whose grandchildren would be Italians.

And society has muddled through in the quite recent past.

Look at Europe after WWI -- slammed not only by a disastrous war, but then a global influenza epidemic, then revolution, Civil War, economic collapse, another world war -- and then prosperity.

One of the reasons to be skeptical of planned economies is that so much of society's resilience comes from heterogeneity, from the many different structures that persist even if the top collapses.

[Estreeter]

Originally Posted by Wendigo

All's Well That Ends Well

I reckon , xyzde69billionaire should start his own little hippie anarchist commune, live there for say 2 years using absolute minimal western anything there, then come back here and say that above in your post Mate

[bowlinggreen]

Originally Posted by deepsepia

Here's the thing, though -- Rome didn't really "implode".

The capacity of people to muddle through should never be underestimated.

The "barbarians" do sack Rome-- but what comes next? In Italy, its the government of Odoacer and then Theodoric the Great, arguably as skillful as any Roman Emperor, ruling over plenty of people whose grandfathers had been Romans, and whose grandchildren would be Italians.

And society has muddled through in the quite recent past.

Look at Europe after WWI -- slammed not only by a disastrous war, but then a global influenza epidemic, then revolution, Civil War, economic collapse, another world war -- and then prosperity.

One of the reasons to be skeptical of planned economies is that so much of society's resilience comes from heterogeneity, from the many different structures that persist even if the top collapses.

We're not talking about collapses as they occurred in the past, but a collapse that will occur due to the utter depletion of the resources necessary to maintain a high tech society.

The people who fled Rome could start over elsewhere, they just needed to breed some horses and plant crops for a few years and they were back in business. Minus their marble buildings and fancy tunics.

But when modern agriculture is no longer sustainable, there will be a huge human dieback. The inevitable wars over the final resources will simply make the starvation worse.

Worst case scenario, when it's all over there may be less than a billion people left on the planet. More primitive agricultural methods will be able to sustain them, in the places where the land is still arable. People will be living like the Amish, and paying tributes of grain and hogs to the barbarian horsemen who periodically sweep through their villages.

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by bowlinggreen

We're not talking about collapses as they occurred in the past, but a collapse that will occur due to the utter depletion of the resources necessary to maintain a high tech society.

Technology is reducing the need for resources. Folks drive less, for example -- and could drive much less if they wanted.

I don't see technology driving resource exhaustion.

Originally Posted by bowlinggreen

The people who fled Rome could start over elsewhere,

They didn't "flee". They stayed right where they were, for the most part. Visigoths confiscated some of the best Roman land-- got given to their aristocracy, but the Romans stayed right on where they were, doing what they'd been doing for the most part.

Originally Posted by bowlinggreen

But when modern agriculture is no longer sustainable, there will be a huge human dieback

Population growth is negative in most of the developed world ex-immigration.

Russia, Italy, Spain, Japan, Germany-- all have static or falling populations. The US just recorded its lowest fertility rate (births per woman) of 1.76 -- that's well below the 2.1 needed just to replace the prior generation.

When I was in college, we read a very doom and gloom policy piece from the Club of Rome, which predicted pretty much all the things that you're describing-- and they were supposed to have happened already.

Beware the stopped clock doomsayer . . . while its true that one day something really bad will happn to all of us, that's not actually news you can use.

[bowlinggreen]

Check out this oil consumption chart.

https://www.indexmundi.com/energy/

Slowly rises, even as cars become more efficient over time.

Yet more will be used, as uncounted millions of peons in India and China become affluent enough to buy our used cars.

There is a self correcting effect, when prices rise, less is used for non essential luxuries, like personal vehicles. But even if we ban driving for the common folk altogether, you can't really get away from using it for heavy applications, like tractors, or gas for fertilizer manufacture. And our huge American military uses a large amount of oil. Try making that go away in the interests of conservation.

Eventually petroleum products will become genuinely scarce, and then the big squeeze will come. When? Who knows? I refuse to make an ironclad prediction because there are too many unknowns.

But to avoid the big squeeze, we are going to need a revolutionary new source of energy.