[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cog', 'L')est we forget, high interest rates and Jimmy Carter. Neither of which inspired consumer confidence.

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cog', 'I')'d prefer a president who puts América first rather than one who goes on apology tours condemning it. But to each his own.

Sorry your girl lost.

[Cog]

What behaviour might that be?

[GHung]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cog', 'W')hat behaviour might that be?

[Cog]

You have an issue with him firing Sally Yates who refused to follow directives concerning the travel ban and James comey who gave Clinton a pass on classified emails? And Andrew McCabe who was at the center of a conspiracy to spy on the Trump campaign.

A president is entitled to hire and fire anyone, for any reason or no reason at all, who work for him. Surely that is not news to you.

[KaiserJeep]

Trump bashing is entirely out of place in the Capitalism thread. You have many available threads to bash Trump in, please use those rather than this one, which is reserved for bashing our silly pin-headed members who owe everything they have including their liesure time, to the Capitalist Economies they live within.

[Cog]

Amen KJ.

[GHung]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cog', 'Y')ou have an issue with him firing Sally Yates who refused to follow directives concerning the travel ban and James comey who gave Clinton a pass on classified emails? And Andrew McCabe who was at the center of a conspiracy to spy on the Trump campaign.

A president is entitled to hire and fire anyone, for any reason or no reason at all, who work for him. Surely that is not news to you.

[GHung]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', 'T')rump bashing is entirely out of place in the Capitalism thread. You have many available threads to bash Trump in, please use those rather than this one, which is reserved for bashing our silly pin-headed members who owe everything they have including their liesure time, to the Capitalist Economies they live within.

[KaiserJeep]

You seem to have made a grand assumption here, without a shred of evidence supporting it. That would be that somehow, magicly, we can think our way out of the conundrum of overpopulation and the attendant problems of resource shortages, climate change, pollution, species extinctions, etc.etc.

Well, it ain't necessarily so. In fact, it almost certainly is not. The nature of humanity, the most successful species yet shaped by evolution, does not guarantee a solution will be found, can be found, or should be found. I have for years argued that - for the sake of the species Homo Sapiens Sapiens, we should colonize space so that when Nature's grim solution to human overpopulation kills many of us, we have another home where WE make all the decisions.

That could work. But should a species unable to coexist with other species on a planet get another chance off-planet?

Only if you are an optimist at heart. In any case, "Capitalism" is just a label for how evolution shaped us to behave on a planet. Any other economic "system" you can imagine isn't "natural", and therefore won't work.

You are about to understand this all too well. When the manure splatters off the rotating ventilator, some of us will be ready while others will still be debating economic "systems". You are welcome to have that conversation with a starving Bangladeshi or Sub-Saharan African, but I warn you that they - and all other disadvantaged everywhere, are ardent Capitalists, because evolution shaped them to be.

[GHung]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', 'Y')ou seem to have made a grand assumption here, without a shred of evidence supporting it. That would be that somehow, magicly, we can think our way out of the conundrum of overpopulation and the attendant problems of resource shortages, climate change, pollution, species extinctions, etc.etc.

[KaiserJeep]

I haven't made any assumptions, and I don't have an agenda, and I'm not being patronizing either. But one thing is abundantly clear from this rambling and seldom coherant thread. There is actually nothing there - no system called "Capitalism". IOW, nothing to blame for whatever you perceive to be shortcomings. No reason that we should be either more or less prosperous going forward, other than the obvious one: more people means that there will at some future date be less per person, when resource constraints meet endlessly growing numbers of humans.

Then, as we get hungrier and sicker and more malnourished, we will respond to hardship as we always do, by reproducing more and more. Because that is what evolution hardwired us to do. I like to think of it as primates behaving like primates. Others apparently find some value in labelling such behaviors "Capitalism", and thinking that we can do better.

Well, there simply is no "better". Built into that set of primate behaviors is a curb on reproduction. Once you get prosperous enough, you reproduce more slowly. We are there in the USA, Canada, much of Europe, where births have fallen below replacement rates. But we already exported the knowledge of how to use technology and fossil fuels to grow more food, end disease, and be more comfortable. But tragically for those new to such knowledge, birth rates don't begin to fall for a few generations after the newfound knowledge arrives. We used those generations to build infrastructure in our Western world. There is not enough energy or raw materials to allow that for the billions of new humans.

There we are, at 7.7 Billion and still growing. Well past the point I might add, where we could let our prosperity naturally curb reproduction, because there is not at this point enough "stuff" for that solution, there are too many people already.

So blame "Capitalism" if you think having a label helps you hate something. But there is nothing else. No magic set of rules, ready to take over when those we have evolved with fail newly changed conditions. You want to believe a solution exists. I really doubt it does, that's all.

Which is why I've always been an advocate for leaving the planet. It's the only solution that allows humans to continue to be humans. Endless solar energy, raw materials that exceed the total mass of the Earth many times over. Habitat for literally trillions of humans. Time enough for evolution to fundamentally change the nature of H Sapiens to something else. Time to revise that set of instincts that evolved for an upright plains ape living on an African savannah.

[vtsnowedin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', '
')
Then, as we get hungrier and sicker and more malnourished, we will respond to hardship as we always do, by reproducing more and more.

[noobtube]

That is what I despise about the Capitalism cowards (similar to the Christian crazies and Muslim maniacs).

Whenever it becomes clear that their beliefs are wrong and they caused their own disaster, the numbnuts either deny it was the fault of their belief system or claim it doesn't matter anyway. Such cowardly horseshit.

This is why whenever someone screams Capitalism is the answer (or Christianity, or Islam) to all life's problems, I know this is a moron. And, there are a lot of morons in the United States.

When morons can fill their bellies while being raging lunatics, you'll have a society dominated by raging lunatics (see Trump, Kavanagh, Clinton, the capitalist cowards, religious nuts, and so on).

[KaiserJeep]

I believe you don't comprehend the nature of Capitalism. Nobody invented it, defined it, or made any rules. Capitalism is tens of thousands of years old, as old as the Bronze Age, when trade routes brought crucible steel into Britain from China, to be forged into blades so expensive only Kings could have them.

Whenever Fuedalism or Socialism or Communism or any other "ism" breaks down, as all of them do, Capitalism spontaneously takes the place of the failed system. Just as when the USSR was on the ropes in the 1940s and 1950s, a thriving and entirely Capitalistic Black Market system fed the populace. When Mao's farm collectives failed, he chose another path, and starved 65 million to death in the greatest act of mass genocide in History.

Capitalism is just normal primate behavior, and humans are primates with all instincts intact. This was not widely recognised until Darwin's works were expanded upon via Anthropology in the mid 20th Century. In fact all social theories and economic speculations such as The Communist Manifesto are entirely defective because they do not acknowledge the nature of man the primate. That is why in a nutshell, all currently taught Economics is obsolete. Karl Marx was a contemporary of Darwin, and never understood his insights, and wrote total nonsense.

Academia has not kept pace with Science on this one. Which is why so many undergraduate minds get filled with collectivist twaddle.

[GHung]

Whatever, KJ, if you choose to paint "capitalism" with a very broad brush.

The question remains; can capitalism exist in any of its many forms as a subset of a circular, sustainable, economy?

[KaiserJeep]

That's the nature of instincts. Evolution built them into your consciousness. Nobody taught you what to do or how to act. They persist and you cannot escape or discard them.

I do not think it matters whether or not the economy grows, shrinks,or remains in steady state.

[GHung]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]KJ said; "Nobody taught you what to do or how to act."

[onlooker]

Well put Ghung. Yes, I too have this problem with we are programmed or we are just Primates. No, not quite. We evolved from them but we are beyond them. We are more than anything now creatures of our Culture as it has evolved. Both channeling us into a very materialistic pattern and into a quite unequal and unjust world. So, back full circle into what Capitalism represents. It represents the formalization and adoption of an economic system which stresses competition, selfishness and greed among other negative traits. We can do better, Ghung I believe also believes this.

[GHung]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('onlooker', 'W')ell put Ghung. Yes, I too have this problem with we are programmed or we are just Primates. No, not quite. We evolved from them but we are beyond them. We are more than anything now creatures of our Culture as it has evolved. Both channeling us into a very materialistic pattern and into a quite unequal and unjust world. So, back full circle into what Capitalism represents. It represents the formalization and adoption of an economic system which stresses competition, selfishness and greed among other negative traits. We can do better, Ghung I believe also believes this.