[gg3]

Can you summarize what's in the video feeds?

[holmes]

ANWR will be used to keep things going as is. The draining of ANWR is the last nail in the coffin. It will be drilled by the cheapest means possible and the ecological mess that is Alaska of today will be the burdon we will have to deal with. The last remaining self sufficient indigenous cultures will be forced into our socialist system as this extended activity will impact the herds and beasts they depend on for survival. The oil will not be used for sustainable infrastructure or conservation projects--it will be used to fuel the war machine and the SUV culture for a very short period. If the drilling doesn't do it the global warming from the exponential use of fossil fuels will.

So I agree with drilling ANWR, but to use that resource for short term, doomed to failure goals, is treason. All GOP's must be tried for treason. They have sold this country off to the highest bidder. They have failed us. We are doomed to socialism.

[gary_malcolm]

Christ, wasn't ANWR supposed to be reserved for a national military emergency back in the 70's? If this isn't a sign of the future (or lack thereof) I don't know what is!

[pepper2000]

I'm a bit confused. I recall ANWR drilling being a big issue in the 2000 campaign, with Bush supporting it even back then. Now that he's been reelected and gotten some more Republicans into the Congress, why are we surprised this is going on?

[savethehumans]

We're not surprised. And global warming's melting the tundra and turning the area into an ecological disaster area already. One way or another, homo sapiens is managing to destroy the Arctic.

What is darkly humorous is that as the tundra collapses, onshore oil rigs, oil pipelines, and the entire industry infrastructure is going to collapse here, there, and everywhere. So whatever oil they manage to get (and there really isn't much of it), a lot of it is never going to reach us. Oh, irony, you just slay me!

[gg3]

Though, keep in mind that it will take about ten years to get the infrastructure in place to start producing oil up there. So, Bush et. al. might "give permission," but some later administration can as easily put the brakes on, and put ANWR back into "emergency usage" status.

This, IMHO, could be the best of both worlds: to be ready to produce it when it becomes necessary, but to not go using it for frivolous purposes.

[bentstrider]

The title of this thread reminds me of a song from an independent rap group called Camp Lo.
It was a song that came out in late 1996 entitled "Luchini".
It went, "this is it.....WHAT! Luchini falling from the sky........CAN'T QUIT WHAT! Making money till we die."
This song pretty much matches the circumstance.

[born2respawn]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('holmes', 'T')he last remaining self sufficient indigenous cultures will be forced into our socialist system

[holmes]

u grow your own food? hunt your own protein source?
then you are on a socialist system. we all are.
You get your food locally?
do You have a coperrative food source that you have stakes in?
Do you [put any manpower into producing your food?
or is all you do is make money so you can buy food at the loacal socialist supermarket?
We are all socialists in one form or other.
The last indegenous folk are truly free and self sufficient.

Understand or do you need it to get to the point where u are waiting in bread lines. Just wait. When the virgin resources are squandered for our wasteful Bullshit society then argue with me, son.
we are just revving up for full bore socialism. Do the pea brains actually think that virgin grade A resources will last that are vital in keeping a full bore exploitative capitalist society running?
are you that fucking stupid?
Quality of life will never get better. It will only get worse until it gets better. wise up.

[Licho]

Erm holmes, this is not socialism US is wild right-wing capitalism. No other country in the west is more far from "socialism" than US..

In every country except some poor 3rd world ones people don't grow their own food. It's terribly inefficient. Your definition seems to define anything more advanced than caveman's life as socialism

[lawnchair]

In the modern socialist/capitalist sense, yes, America is less socialist than other developed nations.
But, in the broader sense, we are very much on the peak of a socialist system. The fact that 'your land' is 'your land' is a social construct, enforced by policing. Without that, the only way to defend your property is with a larger military than the guy next door. Socialism also build roads. Your neighbors can't surround you and refuse you access to your land, or water/energy to be piped in.

Conversely, by social contract, we have assented to the ability of the government to take your property, by taxes and seizure. We try to perfect government to make it a good tradeoff.
And this is only the weakest form of socialism we practise in the US. Subsidies, fraud supression, compulsory education, moral dictates (ie, the war on drugs), firemen... the US is a wildly socialist state. There are big benefits to this that would be (and may become) obvious if we lost that layer of socialism.

[Grimnir]

Who says ANWR isn't still intended for a military emergency? If the site is 10 years away from being operational, it doesn't make for much of an emergency contingency. Better to pump the crude out ASAP and store it somewhere. Since there isn't nearly enough to have an appreciable effect on the economy, it seems likely to me that they have something like this in mind.

[Grimnir]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gg3', 'C')an you summarize what's in the video feeds?

[RIPSmithianEconomics]

You can't say that an economic system is socialists simply because it is based around the division of labour. However, tunnel vision is what will sink us. Most people I ask about peak oil say "someone will find something". The everyday person can't think out of their life narrative, and as a result feels powerless in the face of modern problems.
It seems that the future will be populated by economists and role-players... Though the male/female imbalance might be our undoing.

[MrPC]

It's very easy to think of the US as a socialist country just by looking at its transport system. Trillions of dollars spent on freeways, including freeways that go over freeways that go over freeways. This is an extreme expense.
How is it paid for? Through taxes, based on peoples ability to pay (income, sales, property)

How is it used? Mostly it is used by people according to their needs. Mostly cars, some buses and trucks but far fewer (at least by my own experience).
From each according to his ability to each according to his need. Umm, you don't get much more socialist than that.

[backstop]

MrPC - I think you're greatly mistaken in confusing society, with its massive endeavours for the common good, with a socialist system.
The latter, such as exemplified in the USSR - are centralized in their decision-making to the point of unsustainability, for the good of an unelected elite-in-power. For example, the poor peasants, who were promised 5 acres apeice by the bolshevics, rapidly had that area halved to expand the state farms that failed to meet their quotas, and then cut again and again until in '38, with half-acre plots, Stalin wanted a further halving.

Some brave soul pointed out that those half-acre plots were producing 25% of the country's food supply, and the idea was quietly dropped.
I well agree that so-called 'Free Market' Capitalism (which would be better termed 'Asset Capitalism') shares with Socialism the gross unsustainability of an undemocratic centralization of decision-making. The main differences IMO is that FMC empowers 'juntas' without territorial loyalties and buys power where it can, using force only as a second resort.

Under what may become known as Resource Capitalism, being the sustainable development of resources as society's true capital, decision-making will necessarily be dispersed to the level of decentralization that best serves global sustainability.

BTW the precept you quoted :"From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs"was given lip-service under Lenin and was published by Marx, and so is seen as socialist. But n fact, it originated in a speech at an Anarchist rally in the 1850s in the UK.
One of its best recommendations to my mind is that Thatcher (wife of the retired head of Burmah Oil) hated it and tried to eradicate its influence from the UK taxation system. (She failed).
In serving the needs of society, and not those of the elite, it seems to me an essentially fair basis for decision-making.

[jeep_boy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('savethehumans', 'W')e're not surprised. And global warming's melting the tundra and turning the area into an ecological disaster area already. One way or another, homo sapiens is managing to destroy the Arctic.
What is darkly humorous is that as the tundra collapses, onshore oil rigs, oil pipelines, and the entire industry infrastructure is going to collapse here, there, and everywhere. So whatever oil they manage to get (and there really isn't much of it), a lot of it is never going to reach us. Oh, irony, you just slay me!

[savethehumans]

Fantastic, Grimner! I've printed your recap out for my records....
You'd think with people like Pickens and Simmons screaming bloody murder about peak oil, SOMEBODY in power would start to listen! But, no. De Nial is not a river in Egypt--in fact, it's more like an impenetrable force field!
But then, the people in power don't have to worry about energy problems, do they? Their friends in high (oil & gas rig) places will take good care of them....

[gg3]

Perhaps some clarification of terms would be useful.
A "free enterprise system" is one in which privately-owned enterprises are free to sell their goods and services in an open market, i.e. to freely contract with buyers.
I use the term "freedom of enterprise" to refer to the inalienable right (as I see it anyway) of individuals to form productive enterprises and sell their goods & services in an open market.
Free enterprise and markets, are not identical with "capitalism."

A "capitalist enterprise" is one way of organizing an enterprise: ownership by financial capital. The classic case of this type is the publicly-traded corporation, which is owned by shareholders.

"Capitalism" is an economic philosophy that is based predominantly on consideration of enterprises of the "capitalist" type as per above. For example, capitalism calls for a market, not only in goods and services, but also in equity (shares) of corporations. Financial capital operates within this market to buy & sell equity (shares) of "publicly-traded" companies.

The term "natural capitalism" was created as a way of ennumerating the value of natural resources in financial terms that were understandable to the capitalist world, i.e. as assets and equity that could be invested, traded, saved, squandered, etc.
There are other ways to practice freedom of enterprise without becoming engaged in financial capitalism. Remember that they key characteristic of a capitalist enterprise is that it is owned by finance capital.

So as alternatives, you could have the "sole proprietorship," where the key characteristic is ownership by a single individual. This was a dominant form of enterprise until very recently. Family ownership can also operate as sole proprietorship. Or, you could have "partnerships," which in their basic form entail mutual unlimited liability. "Limited partnerships" allow participation by one or more persons on the basis of "limited liability," for example, you have a limited partnership to operate a piece of income property; if someone walks up the steps, trips and breaks their leg, they can sue the partnership but they can't sue the limited partners.

Personally, I consider partnerships to be "unsafe business sex," due to the risk of liabilities passing through to individuals. For example, if my company were a partnership and one of the techs had an accident driving to a job site, the lawsuit could reach through the company to that individual, and then also to anyone else in the company, the company's assets, and each person's individual personal assets (can you say "lose your house"?).

Here are some other alternatives to finacial capitalism; and remember, all of these operate in a free enterprise, market-based system:
You can have a consumer cooperative, or an employee-owned cooperative, each owned by its respective members (that is, the "shares" are owned by the members). You can have an LLC ("Limited liability corporation"), which uses the best elements of a partnership and a corporation (limited liability, and simplified managerial structure), and can function with a member-elected management similar to a co-op. You can have various types of investment trusts, and these are typically used for real estate management (and I don't know a whole lot about income property structures, so I won't try to speculate further on this item).

You can have a "professional corporation," which is where a licensed or regulated professional (such as a doctor or lawyer) incorporates him/herself: in essence a sole proprietorship but with liability protection. You can have an "S-corporation," which is similar to a publicly-traded company in its structure, but is owned by (typically) 35 or fewer individuals altogether (i.e. 35 fairly wealthy people get together and start an S-corp, and each person's ownership share can be quite large, with $20,000 typically being the *minimum*).

And then, last but not least, the C-corporation, which is the publicly traded corporation of the type most of us are familar with, and which can have an unlimited number of owners, buying & selling shares through the stock exchange (which itself is the market mechanism of finance capital).

Socialism, on the other hand, is ownership of productive enterprises by "society as a whole," i.e. via a society's government.
Now strictly speaking there are certain functions that are necessarily best kept in the hands of government: public safety (police, fire, paramedics), sanitation, and so on. Public education is arguably necessary to assure that every child can become literate & numerate, on the basis that literacy & numeracy are necessary for each individual to have a fair chance of individual success, and are also necessary for individuals to participate meaningfully in a democratic society.

But the key to socialism as such, is that it entails social (state) ownership of productive enterprises that could otherwise operate successfully as profit-making companies.
In the more moderate forms of socialism, the state owns only the largest core industries: the things that are the foundations of a national economy and are so large that they would otherwise require a capitalist ownership structure. For example oil, steel, cement, automobile manufacturing, and suchlike heavy industries with huge manufacturing plants.

As the degree of socialism becomes more extensive, the state picks up ownership of more types of enterprise, down to a smaller and smaller scale. At a mid-way point in the spectrum, the state might own anything that requires a factory, but individuals could still operate wholesale and retail distribution, main-street enterprises such as shops and restaurants, small contracting companies such as builders, and so on.

The extreme form of socialism puts the entire economy into state ownership, including the main-street shops, farms, and individual trades workers. It leaves no room whatsoever for private ownership of any productive enterprise. This is what we've come to know and loathe when we refer to Soviet-style socialism, or Maoist Chinese style socialism (until recently).

At its most extreme, it chokes off initiative under layers of state bureaucracy, it stifles all manner of innovation, and it smothers individuals in ways too numerous to name. And even if it were conducted by a democratic government with respect for civil and human rights, it would still suffer from these evils.
Needless to say, the Western World is very very far from the kinds of socialism that are characterized by these evils. And even if we were to move another notch or two down the road, most of us would not find our liberties curtailed or our initiative stifled (though we would obviously feel a heightened sense of vigilance to see to it that things didn't go too much further!).

But now here's an interesting paradox. The evil of socialism, as Westerners see it, is in its tendency to crush individuals and stifle the freedom that makes for initiative and innovation. But if you have pure and complete capitalism, everything is owned by finance capital, so the result is not much different! That is, the result is that the individual is effectively prevented from organizing any type of productive enterprise unless it is owned by outside capital interests. This precludes most of the types of free enterprise structures I mentioned above!

Here's an example of how that works. Property developers set up shopping malls, and insist on only leasing space to stores that are part of national chains or franchises (Target, Safeway, McDonald's, etc.). Those chains & franchises, in turn, are capitalist enterprises traded on the public stock market. They are *not* part of the vast range of other types of ownership structures I mentioned above. You will not find Bob & Betty's Burgers, or Greg's Garden Supply, or the Locally-Grown Food Co-op, or anything else of that kind. People who wish to freely operate enterprises that are not part of national chains or franchises, are prevented from doing so!

Libertarians have traditionally called for the elimination of the privilege of perpetual limitation of liability, on the grounds that it creates corporations that have rights over and above those of individuals, i.e. unequal rights. But there is another level of wisdom to the Libertarian position that I don't even think most Libertarians are aware of: it would preclude capitalism turning into the same kind of stifling, soul-killing system that socialism turned into in the 20th century.

For a free market to be truly free, it has to be free in terms of the types of structures by which people can organize their productive enterprises. It must necessarily not give unfair favor to one type of business structure over another. And it must have legal protections that do not allow any one type of business structure to become so dominant as to effectively monopolize the production and distribution of goods and services in any given sector.

In a truly free economic system, you would see a far larger proportion of goods and services provided by companies that are owned by individuals, families, and small groups of whatever kind that are local in nature. You would see far more local brands, and far fewer "national brands" dominating the market-space. And there would be far fewer entry barriers to new companies joining in the competition. This is sometimes referred to as a "Jeffersonian" free enterprise system. To my mind it's the ideal case, precisely because it does offer the widest range of freedom for individuals to develop enterprises using any structure they see fit. We're a long way from there.

[holmes]

finally someone realizes that exploitative capitalism which The US is all about is as disgusting as full bore socialism. They both rape the land and leave little good behind. And promote exponential growth.
That is why I am a strong proponent of ecological economics and a free market combined. Alas only in a perfect world will these be implemented. maybe after the culling is complete will there be any chance to implement something sane. as is go to the shrink once a month to keep from blowing away entire communities of humanoids.
LOL.

Capitalism = socialism after the A+ virgin resources are fully exploited.
just be a whole lot of people rationed out mediocre quality resources.

sad part is that i still have to work in the exploitative system. what else can most of us do right now. Im getting out as soon as i can. 10 years max and im 90% self sufficient.