Topic: The end is near - page 3. (Read 17362 times)

and without fail and it afflicts us all.

Be careful when predicting the end of the world...it only happens once in a lifetime

Yes I kinda of meant managing as to me in the large scope of things managing/mediating means the same thing. Maybe slightly different responsibilities but same meaning in the end.

So you are saying voluntary so if 5 ppl decide not to participate in the election and go off elsewhere, where would you go such that the system is different and you can find a place with no mediator? Remember its a global economy if you want to say inthe developed world, the rules are all the same. So your notion of voluntary cooperation doesn't apply. Everyone is forced to cooperate to give their oppinion, and it is chaos. With 100 million people there will always be a small pct that always wants to influence change and actually the people who cooperate are those who vote. However voting is like picking between lesser evils as like I said before the voice of the people is not heard anymore.

The manager/mediator will never get it right, as he/she is a human and is irrational him/herself. However what I'm saying is, society is more productive and more efficient at arriving at conclusions if this person or thing exists. If it didn't you wouldnt have managers/mediators the notion would not exist and we would find better ways to manage ourselves and run companies without the need of people being managed as we are all accountable to the balance sheet, in the end it doesn't happen.

I do see what your saying though and it is all theory, but in theory it may sound nicer that any choas at first will be resolved because of the dynamic complexity of nature itself, but I'm not so sure that the standard of living would be better off in absolute terms using that theory than what it is now, even in the long run.

We evolved to have the system we have, and we grow/prosper on every breakthrough technologically, so we strive for the next breakthrough and work towards holding politicians in power to be accountable. Maybe the next major breakthrough will allow for this and is what we need for the next phase of long term growth.

Dumb it down even further; do you need the mediator to be able to use force, to assert his opinion? Or is it feasible that even a mediator is fallible and lacks intricate understanding of how every action in the universe has an equal and opposite reaction and how they all interconnect and and as such is just another opinion.

Those 10 people in the meeting choose to corporate or not, no mediator is necessary, I think you may be confusing managing with mediation. All managers need to mediate to propagate there will,  If the 10 members in the meeting  are barbaric you need a manager to force them to behave, but that is not necessary if their participation is voluntary, the alternate to lack of corporation is coercion and force, if the outcome is unfair they will revolt, and you will need force to control them again.

The order in managing the complexity in natural systems proves mediation is not necessary. Nature is an infinitely more complex dynamic and functions perfectly without a mediator. (Admittedlythere is a God dilution; however there is no evidence of the all knowing mediator or judge)

Order created by willful corporation is what builds prosperity, Order by any other means is fallible to abuse and corruption.

It is evident that man is ineffective at managing dynamic complex systems (any ecosystem for eg) to manage effectively we need to simplify the rules and create clockwork / binary mechanisms / systems.

It is those systems that become the problem as with all man made designs eventually become obsolete as the inputs and outputs evolve.  

Ofcourse that statement you quoted is not sufficient to describe our society today which is more complex. But if you had read through the rest I said that it boils down to simply mediating society making decisions for the betterment of us all. Instead our mediator has no accountability and the whole social circle in politics is not lead by just decisions based on the needs or wants of the population. When the population or the herd of sheep say something is btter for us but the mediator says no without any notice or reason then we are at a crossroads there.

You need a mediator hands down, in order for chaos to be organized. Ever been to a meeting with 10 people all speaking about the same issues but ina different opinion? You need someone where to organize the discussion/decisions. Like I said dumb the problem down and you can see some sort of correlation with things in our lives with the larger picture

I think you have to think through your position a little harder. The growth we have in the economy today is not natural, it is parasitic in nature firstly it consumes the productivity of the producers to benefit a small elite, and in turn the producers compensate by producing more efficiently allowing the parasitic (wilfully unproductive) members to persist in society, all at the expense of the environment.

The reason self sufficient "primitive tribes" don't grow is because they are in equilibrium. Not because they lack capital goods, they have all the capital goods they need. Nor are they suffering from depression and postal killings of rage out of frustration, it is just your judgment that makes them inferior to you, or the introduction of an imbalance into the community.

Had they evolved in close proximity to limited resources they too would be more like us.

Conflict is the result of the projection of blame for unfulfilled need, by contrast innovation is finding ways of fulfilling need by cooperation and creativity, a result of free individuals willfully cooperating.   

All States fail or will fail because the try to prevent conflict with force, at the expense of freedom and creativity the result is fostering conflict not cooperation.

We are at the tipping point, and force coercive or by consensus has the upper hand.

govt vs no govt its so simple guys dumb the problem down to a group of people and a mediator. The mediator assesses positions and gives the final say like a govt. The mediator cAn be wrong but if ppl believe in him then it works as some benefit while others do not. You must adapt endlessly ad it alwas has been survival of the fittest. Not sure why we would mend laws sacrificing growth and qualitynof life to those who cannot adapt and are not fit for survival. Its primitave but true.

On the other hand you dont let ppl die. Our govt has no accountibility because they donot have anyone watching over them thus are not real mediators. If politicians were led by the needs of the population then govt would ne forced to be accountable. The whole circle is scewed in favor of those who are in the know and we are left trying to adapt. So thats why we revolt or waitnfor someone like ron paul to enter.

A great falsification of myer briggs is that you use it to dictate how you think and persuade yourself of decisions. Dont box yourself. You can with practice always become something u are not natively just that it takes effort and nothing great comes without effort. Infact effort and quality pf results are positively correlated.

Intp will only help you justify how others may think or feel as we are irrational beings it tries to give understanding of why we do the things we do. In reality its just a first step.

Hardly. It's completely historical.

It represents the transition from hunter-gatherer societies which invested and produced nothing, to farming communities which advanced culturally, societally, and in terms of wealth by inventing concepts of property, territory, and production, in terms of producing much more food than H/G'ing could, and producing more goods people wanted. Specialization took root as well and was the beginning of mass societies. Farming communities could support more people too.

It also was the beginning of both government, soldiers, and war, because by producing extra it became possible to support a full-time non-productive class of bureaucrats and soldiers.

This is like ancient history 101, and it's surprising to hear anyone contradict what should be well known by even jr. highschoolers.

The state does not create farming. Nor does it arise out of nowhere.

Of course they did. When one of them built the first house, the first granary, the first plow, all of these are capital goods, rather than living in caves, hand to mouth, with no tools at all. You are simply ignorant of early human history, apparently.

And why do you think this is? The answer is cultural, not political. And btw, while they may be stateless they are not without leaders that have the equivalent of political power, ie: chiefs and powerful persons.

I submit that the reason the savage communities don't advance economically is an ideology of conservatism in their way of life, and a cultural attitude of communalism.

What finally created the modern world was when one culture in the world, the British culture, broke away from their rulers, not because they embraced them! No one can say the Brits didn't have a state, they had kings, like everyone else. But unlike everyone else they were very independent, very--that is--individualist. Because unlike everywhere else they were ruled by foreigners, by the Normans, and no society in human history has liked to be ruled by foreigners. Thus the Magna Carta in the early, early days of 1215 which established rights and duties of the kind, etc.

The Romans too realized this, that whenever they tried to rule a foreign land with their own people they had nothing but insurrections and resistance, but put one of their own in power, a puppet ruler, like Pontius Pilate among the Jews, and people submitted to rule from one of their own. Arguably the USA still uses this technique.

In any case, this is what happened in England that arguably created such a different British culture than anywhere else in the world and finally allowed the industrial revolution to happen.

And btw, the government did nothing to make the industrial revolution happen--it was taken by surprise by it more than anything and has cracked down on it ever since.

Everywhere around the world we see strong governments, and yet this is not where the modern world was born, but in the one place that had a weak and distant government. This belies your thesis entirely.

Government has always been in the way of progress. If you think a strong state creates the modern world there have seldom been a stronger government than the total rulers of ancient Egypt or China, for whom their entire populace were slaves. Yet those places languished in poverty as nearly as everywhere else.

You are wrong.

I mean the former has capital goods and investment and the tribal worker does not.

Sort of. Concepts of property came into existence at this time, by necessity, which is actually a move away from collectivism. While some hunter gatherers had only a limited concept of private property, by the time they become farming communities they develop it fairly strongly, by necessity.

Early America was not collectivized nor had much of a state at all, and it's the most successful country the world has seen and invented the modern world. History belies your point again.

Largely irrelevant.

The state "support" as you put it is in the form of the state's monopoly on police, law, and courts. However all three of those can also be provided on the market without state collusion, thus we don't need the state to provide any of those and therefore we don't need the state for capitalism to work just fine.

As for planned obsolescence, it suits peoples needs in some industries. The incentives on business are to maximize profit, and this leads to less overall waste rather than more as you suggest.

And if that's not true in any particular case, it's likely to be because business collusion with government has made entry and competition by market competitors very difficult or impossible, thus giving a de facto monopoly.

For instance, when meat-inspection laws were passed, the big supermarkets were very happy and lobbied for them, because they realized they could impose a cost of small meat markets and could themselves absorb the cost far more easily as large producers.

The laws passed and the result was just that, all the corner butchers closed down, no longer profitable, and now everyone buys their meat at supermarkets.

But that result is because of the intersection of business and government, and has nothing to do with market activity itself. If there were no government, it would be impossible for that to happen. Thus the problem is government activity in the marketplace, not competition, certainly not capitalism.

Well, I personally was hoping BTC would take off so I could purchase an Earthship and ride out the tribulation (impending end) http://earthship.com/

I am half-way kidding BTW.

The "earthship" beats living in the woods anyways!

People aren't going to give up their iPhones, facebooks, cars, and air conditioned homes to go live in the woods eating berries, no matter how convincing of a pitch Zarathustra tries to make.

Not quite, I just don't consider it my duty to convince you or anyone else of my position.

Not entirely incorrect, however.  I'm an INTP, and as such I'm ever capable of reassessing my position based on new information, and suffer little due to cognative dissonance.  As such, an INTP can't remain so flexible unless there is some degree of doubt in the validity of his/her position, and I'm no exception.  I have no problem admitting that I don't consider myself perfect, in thought or action.  I've changed my position on some things over the course of my adult life, including my position on economic theories.  That's why I'm an Austrian now, I used to be much more of a classic monetarist.  Although I can't recall holding positions similar to your own at any point in life.

That is far from true, unfortunately.

Meh, let Zarathustra believe. He may even be right that tribal "natural" societies had no capital growth, and capitalism was a recent invention. He may even be right in saying that capitalism is a product of human collectivization, if by "collectivization" he simply means "humans willing to work and trade together." But so what? Things are a hell out a lot better now than they were when we were all stuck in forests. And there is no harm, or effect, of beliefs like his.

Yes, that's the difference. Moonshadow is somebody who believes that he is writing to convince himself instead of others.
So funny.

Zarathustra is a true believer.  He doesn't come here and make his statements because he needs to convince himself, he comes here because he thinks it's his duty to convince you.  I recommend use of the ignore button to the left.

Exactly, within communities beyond the state, there has never been such a ridiculously wasteful system, which produces growing surpluses with mountains of accumulated material.

"Essentially, the economy is an engine that transforms resources into waste."

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7924

Ahistoric Science Fiction. Fairytales.
The reason, why a tribal person does not 'invest', does not produce surpluses and does not grow economically, is the absence of the state and the absence of collectivism.

Not a single stateless community in the whole history of mankind did ever invest in capital goods multiplying the effectiveness of our work.
And therefore, the stateless communities are economically the same as they have been thousands of years ago. Zero growth.



Exactly. The collectivist worker is working with capital goods and investment! Thanks for disproving yourself! This collectivist investment story with capital goods began with the neolitic revolution: the patriarchal collectivisation of the animals and after that the collectivisation of the former anarchist human. Via animal farming to men farming.


Fairytales, written by aristocratic collectivists in Vienna, whitout any anthropological knowledge of the pre-patriarchal (non-collectivist) epoch. The real world is different. In the real world, there has never been an economy with growing investment and capital goods beyond a paternalised collectivist society. And that is still the case today. No state, no economy.