[americandream]

Lets get to the core issue here. Sustainable civilisation. Our choices? We hear the term sustainability bandied about. What does it mean? What choices do we face? Let's keep it simple...

1 Sustainable global capitalism....No matter what we do within the capitalist system, it's very logic is based on the intensive use of resources for the garnering of profit. To that extent any talk of sustainability has to take account of this fact and its ramifications in terms of whether controls can adequately be put in place to rein in capitalism to the degree that it is sustainable without overwhelming its fundamental dynamic of capital acquisition.

2 Variations of nationalism...We may on the other hand choose a reversion to variants of nationalism....itself essentially a variant of capitalism without globalism but one that fundamentally multiplied by as many of the nationalisms that subsequently abound, will in effect by largely inconsequential on the resource profile of its economies as that of global captalism.

3....Pure marxism. In other words, the complete elimination of private ownership, the utilisation as a result of community initiatives and the effect thereof of imposing a limitation on the output of that system of its usage of resources.

What would the resource profile of the last look like in comparison with the former two? Forget Maoism, Stalinism or all the other ism's that have proliferated as a result of attempts to interpret the writings of Marx. The fundamental structure of the ideal marxist economy is embodied in the writings of the great man, we do not have far to go.

[Concerned]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', 'L')ets get to the core issue here. Sustainable civilisation. Our choices? We hear the term sustainability bandied about. What does it mean? What choices do we face? Let's keep it simple...

[americandream]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Concerned', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', 'L')ets get to the core issue here. Sustainable civilisation. Our choices? We hear the term sustainability bandied about. What does it mean? What choices do we face? Let's keep it simple...

[coyote]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', 'A')s long as we entertain any notion of markets, be they small or big, we will not get away from the logic of their dialectic....capitalism.

[americandream]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('coyote', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', 'A')s long as we entertain any notion of markets, be they small or big, we will not get away from the logic of their dialectic....capitalism.

[Ludi]

Civilization probably isn't sustainable. We need to come up with another model.


For why: "Ishmael" and "The Story of B" by Daniel Quinn

For how: "Beyond Civilization" by Daniel Quinn and "Permaculture: a designers manual" by Bill Mollison

[coyote]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'F')or how: "Beyond Civilization" by Daniel Quinn

[MrBill]

Some people insist on confusing economics with government.

A market economy where production is guided by market signals is always preferable to an economy where production decisions are decided by dictat.

Even a simple economy requires millions of price signals to function properly. Central planners are not up to the task. Their poor decisions and bogus 5-year plans have been proven time and again not to work. There is really no point to argue this fact. Communism failed just like many socialist experiments.

Now that is different than taxing wealth and re-distributing it according to public need. You can tax wealth creation to save the environment and encourage or discourage certain behavior if you choose. What you cannot do is tax your way to prosperity.

The means of production in private hands will always produce more wealth than under public control. Unfortunately, we live in an age when even supposedly free market economies routinely tax away up to 50% of privately generated wealth for the public good (i.e. a wealth transfer from the most productive to the least productive citizens). That is fine I suppose if there is a greater good? Unfortunately, I doubt it.

What rubs me the wrong way is that governments interfer in the market all the time for the public good, and then when it all ends in a mess everyone blames it on the markets instead of on themselves as voters and taxpayers. How can you have a perfect system run by idiots?

Marxism indeed. The last 'ism' I would trust to manage my economy! It sounds like someone got too much Political Science 101 and not enough Real Politik?