Topic: Economic Devastation - page 144. (Read 504811 times)

Lets take a closer look at this Venus Project.


Lets just call this what it is a modern day repackaging of communism.


According to Marx such an arrangement is made possible by the abundance of goods and services that a developed communist society will produce. The idea is that with full development of socialism there will be enough to satisfy everyone's needs.

Marx described the conditions under which such a creed could be applied. Mainly a society where  technology and social organization had substantially eliminated the need for physical labor.
Marx argued his belief that, in such a mythical society, each person would be motivated to work for the good of society despite the absence of a social mechanism compelling them to work.    

Just remember the true natural state of such a system as was so elegantly laid out for us by George Orwell.

I think we need the venus project, But that would require a radical change in the way we think and live, I'm not sure many people are up for it, Some of us really wouldn't have a problem with a system in which no one "Owns" anything and there is no money, But some have no desire at all to be equal, They want to be above everyone else or they are not happy unless someone or some thing is under their control.

Maybe if we could create such a system where the needs of mankind are met firstly then there would be no need for a class based society.

Food, Clothing, Housing, Access to technology, With those needs met and guranteed to each person there would be no need to kill someone for something or start a war etc.

All monetary based systems require infinite growth to survive, Infinite growth is not possible on a finite planet with finite resources, Something will have to give sooner or later.

Pysicist Michio Kaku describes this as the transition from a type 0 to type 1 civilization.

As he puts it: "This is the most important transition because it's not clear if we are going to make it."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GooNhOIMY0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NPC47qMJVg

The Republic was mysteriously transmogrified into a Democracy by the admisistration of FDR.

My $.02.

Of all the the premises of the Dark Enlightenment this is the most most critical for this is the mechanism (described as the power vacuum up-thread) which allows collectivism to grow to the the point where it threatens systemic collapse.

The historical predecessor for our current system of government was Athenian democracy. Their system lasted for 178 years.


The most chilling praise of democracy that I have ever read is that of James Anthony Froude.  


The founding fathers were well aware of the potential dangers.


Specifically the founding fathers built a government with multiple safeguards against democracy. They built a government which

1) Lacked the ability to directly tax the population (no authority to tax income).
2) Had only one of its two legislative branches directly elected (The senate was appointed by state legislatures).
3) Did not have a fiat currency (gold and silver was money).
4) Did not have a central bank (no FED).
5) Did not allow direct election of the president (president was to be selected by the electoral collage).
6) Only gave the right to vote to landowners (called freeholders).
7) Gave most power to the states.

Gradually over time each of these safeguards has fallen. When Benjamin Franklin was asked what form of government the constitution of 1787 had created, he replied: "A republic, if you can keep it."
He reply has traditionally been read as a warning against monarchy, but it could just as easily be read as a warning against democracy. The Dark Enlightenment argues that we are failing to "keep it".

It argues that the republic is decaying into democracy and that democracy is a failure.

Sounds like there are some zerohedgers here..

Dark Ages...

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.5672089

The diagram of the Dark Enlightenment above is incomplete.
It is missing Contentionism. I corrected this omission.
 

Adding to my prior post, I was enjoying the comments and I see that ESR still remembers me well. I didn't know I was the only person he restricted to one post per day. I guess I am the only person he banned from his blog under my real name and two pseudonyms.

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=5238&cpage=1#comment-425069


I'm amused.

This is the most interesting and well-written thread that I've ever read in this forum. I think I need more time to get everything.

This post is currently the second google search result when searching for "Economic Devastation"

https://www.google.com/#q=economic+devistation

Due to the nature of our online ministry we try to keep abreast of what's going on in the world. Many of the questions our readers ask have to do with news items and how world events fit into biblical prophecy. This keeps us "on our toes" researching and reading several news sources.

This is largely false. Socialism with public ownership of the means of production is a somewhat different philosophy. See the Definition of Communism. At its heart modern Socialism is about public administration and control (via taxation, regulation, and redistribution) of industry. It is neutral in regards to ownership.


You are confusing proximate and ultimate cause  
The easiest way to find the ultimate cause (as with so many things in life) is to follow the money.
Where does the money ultimately come from? Who paid the bill? If the answer is government (via taxes, spending, or debt) the process is Socialism.
The winner in your example was Bank of America. Corporate socialism and Welfare socialism are not fundamentally different processes. The only difference is who happened to profit from that round of Socialism's taxation, regulation, redistribution, and debt.


We can you just have not yet realized it. Consider reading the two links in the OP once more. Here is the fundamental critical insight.

Just to be clear - socialism is built upon the public ownership of the means of production. It used to be [for example] enshrined within Clause 4 of the Labour Party's (UK) constitution - :- " To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service."

   The Labour Party dropped Clause 4 years ago - thereby effectively depriving the British electorate of any choice come election time. When Clause 4 was dropped, so was socialism. It is nowhere present any longer. The UK was bought up by the US during financial deregulation back in 1986, thanks to Margaret Thatcher/Sir Alan Walters (Martin Armstrong ?) - we certainly can't blame the state we are in on socialism.

The Public/Private enterprise debacle as posted in my second link re.the Skye Bridge, to my mind, is most definitely not a failure of socialism as such. An example of how the private ownership of the means of production is able to sequestrate funds from the public purse ? Yes, definitely.
    The Skye Bridge was effectively owned by the Bank of America - when I last looked there was no public ownership of the Bank of America - its a private enterprise. The Bank of America is a bastion of US capitalism.

  It just seems a bit disingenuous to be blaming all this on "socialism" - lets call a spade a spade hey ?

   Its as clear as the day is long where the blame for our current economic turmoil lay - it lay with good old fashioned capitalism and the concentration of the ownership and control of the means of production in the hands of private and immensely wealthy individuals.

Your first link, the building of the Three Gorges Dam, is socialism we agree.
 
Your second link, however, is an example of private capture and use of taxation powers. This is simply socialism dressed up and disguised as capitalism.

Definition of Socialism:
A political theory advocating the collective administration of the means of production, distribution of goods, and individual behavior.

Most people think of socialism as aid for the poor, however, it is really just collective administration. This administrative power includes taxation power. In your example a corporation captured this power and used it on those poor folks living on the island. Eventually the people rebelled.

The corporation then shifted its strategy and got the government to buy them out which dispersed the cost to the larger UK taxpayer (again more corporate socialism). With a larger pool to draw from it provoked less resistance and we see the power vacuum in action.    
From Wikipedia on the Skye Bridge Protests:
This is a myth.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_times

None of us are right about all issues all of the time.