[Cloud9]

Discounting the neos the fascist tend to be better dressed.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Last_Historian', 'T')hinking about things is the road to real understanding.

[rangerone314]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SeaGypsy', 'W')hen I said the micromanagers can go to hell, I was not being a wordy hypocrite; or reflecting on history.Text deleted..

[lper100km]

It’s too bad that LH included ‘communism’ in the thread header. Maybe it was just to be provocative. Whatever. This word simply incites knee jerk reactions and stifles what could have been an intelligent discussion of possible responses to future endemic shortages. Anyone proposing or agreeing with some sort of controlled distribution is immediately branded as a communist with all the 1950s connotation that implies. Arguing over names is as futile as arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

One has to hope that somewhere there is a govt. dept that is working on the logistics of national resource scarcities. Maybe some private think tank has a clue. There’s no hope that industry will bother. More than three months into the future stretches the imagination too much and besides, the shareholders don’t want such talk.

It should be obvious that the attitudes, policies and structure of societies that exist in conditions of ample resources cannot be the same as when those resources steadily erode. Reason says that if the supply conditions reverse, then the policies towards them should also reverse. In times of plenty, it is easy to be liberal, generous and have a sense of freedom. In lean times, liberality converts to conservation, waste to re-purposing, generosity to self serving, choices to whatever’s available today, supply on demand to controlled distribution. This has nothing to do with any ‘ism’. It’s simply the way things are.

Fight it if you like. It won’t change anything. The social changes would not be because of any political line of thought but as a forced practical reaction to a real emergency – the ‘Long Emergency’.

[Stonemason]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Narz', 'P')eople need coercion. Coercion is inevitable.

[Jotapay]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Stonemason', 'A')lso, if a person is educated with logic and empiricism, the choices they make compared to an uninformed person are no doubt to their benefit, as that is what our brains are for, processing physical reality.

[Cloud9]

Government cannot save us. We must save our selves.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Stonemason', 'I') would disagree and say all that is wrong with the world comes from coercion. People have an undying need to be free of coercion (see: history), where did you came up with the belief that people need it?

[Narz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Stonemason', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Narz', 'P')eople need coercion. Coercion is inevitable.

[Stonemason]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', '[')url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons]This is pretty compelling.[/url]

[Stonemason]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Narz', 'E')very culture creates rules about behavior that help ease the strain of unlimited freedom. Unlimited freedom is intolerable. One of the #1 complaints of people who are suicidal is that they feel their lives don't matter to anyone, nothing they do matters, they have no real responsibilities that make a difference. Everyone cowers in fear at the words "constraint", "obligation", etc. & yet without constraint & obligation no civil society could exist or even relationships.
I would say all that is wrong comes from the striving towards "pseudo-freedom".

[SeaGypsy]

Narz is about 23/ post modernist/ doesn't believe in terminism.
Mos is being realistic as an honourable devils advocate.

IMO there is always room to move in the way rules are set. A good set of rules post collapse might be similar to the Laws of Medina; as laid out in the Koran (can't be bothered explaining them now). If you want to leave the city you are warned of the dangers and are free to go. If you want to come in, you must show you understand the rules of the city.

Outside the walls you are free, there is anarchy, no law.

Inside the walls you are held to do good for the commons, according to the will of the commons.

If you don't like it you are free to look for another city, or to survive or die in the wilderness.

Believe it or not this is straight from the Koran.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Stonemason', '
')It's also interesting it came at a time when the shackles of the state hadn't yet gripped the neck too tightly of those living in the colonies. For several decades there was what could almost be called an anarchic society.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Stonemason', 'I')t seems to me that 'civil society' is founded upon mutual benefit and reciprocal voluntary transaction than coercion, other than the parasitical state of course, which can hardly be called civil in its operations, it is the naked use of coercion to herd people around to a minorities whims.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', ' ')Desperate people do desperate things which will be as bad if not worse than your fears of state control.

[Last_Historian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'A')nd how do compromise, compassion, and sacrifice fit into the Green Communist society of surveillance?

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Last_Historian', 'I')ronically, your freedom will result in more privation and less freedom for others.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Last_Historian', 'T')o solve problems of their environment, humans create structures of socio-political complexity, usually called "states" or "governments".

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '
')And how do compromise, compassion, and sacrifice fit into the Green Communist society of surveillance?

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', 'T')hey don't. People are arguing about two extremes and there is no middle-ground being explored.