[I_Like_Plants]

I'm with Pops - if I'm a leftist it's the old style, populist leftist.

Hawkcreek - that's my thinking too - I'm becoming very poor, and my living will be earned on a cash basis sketching folks, with perhaps some handicrafts and a bit of street music thrown in. But, I'll be getting back to basic needs, the need for self-actualization, I'll be building up skills that are self expression, that justify my existance on the most basic level.

Compare that will working my ass off to make myself justifiable to the credit card companies! And not developing any art or music or handicraft skills at all!

Maslow's pyramid is more subversive than he realized. Maslow realized that food, shelter, etc., pretty much didn't matter if the person saw no reason to exist in the first place. The "artificial busyness" created by the normal American rat-race can fool the American for quite a while into thinking they are actualizing themself, but when the shit hits the fan financially, too many might realize what a crock 'o' humanure the whole rat-race is.

As an example in my own case, Will I eventually be out from under my financial cloud? Oh, sure, it may be years but I will be. But then, Will I do what the system wants and be another good little rat-racer? No way!

Abraham Maslow would probably be in prison for dissidence if he were alive now.

[Twilight]

Taxes are necessary to fund expenditure that cannot be funded through individual means. Obviously it is preferable that the intended use should be to local benefit. An example would be the construction of a mill or a canal to serve a region. Ideally tax revenue would be spent in the vicinity of where it was raised, and not exported, as that just bleeds wealth away and can ultimately kill the source.

Whatever direction things take on the downslope, this is unlikely to change. It is the way humans tend to approach things when cooperation is necessary to survival. We may not be embarking on any new construction, but when it becomes necessary to renovate a canal for trade, this is the manner in which it will be achieved. Some sort of town-level funding. The details of the ideology that once held sway may not be of great practical importance.

Clearly the precise manner in which resources are raised is contentious. Imposing a tax in some proportion to value of owned property, I can see how that would be harmful. But it would be wrong to label it socialist. Depending on how you define it, individuals may not own property, so the concept of imposing tax and confiscation on non-payment would be ridiculous. Inability to fund property upkeep is more threatening where, 1990s FSU or 2000s USA? I believe in the former people were safer as exact details of ownership had never been of great importance, and the authorities didn't give a damn anyway. In most places they still don't. In the latter, it is still preferable to be the owner of a thousand worthless empty shells than to abandon that claim and let the inhabitants be. For how much longer though? For now, the comparison is uncomfortably ironic.

Eastbay is right, by the way. I think there shall be broad convergence. The left-right split rose in parallel with fossil energy availability and the vast surplus productive capacity generated. Politics of one form or another is a constant, a staple of human society, but ideology, dogma, that is a luxury.

In future, we will have to adjust to compromise, pragmatism and expediency, and leave the left/right baggage behind.