96 replies to this topic

[NICKxSUTTON]

John, on 06 June 2009 - 08:51 PM, said:

What will destroy the ruling class is when the world reaches it's breaking point, when there is no food and no goods for the masses of people and we decide as a whole to no longer recognize their wealth and to take what is ours.

That's the double edge sword of state socialism, it gives the poor a bit more but it reverses the path to the breaking point. And only temporarily until it is corrupted and overthrown.

this is one of the things i was saying just reworded more sophisticly

[Steve]

John, on 06 June 2009 - 08:51 PM, said:

What will destroy the ruling class is when the world reaches it's breaking point, when there is no food and no goods for the masses of people and we decide as a whole to no longer recognize their wealth and to take what is ours.

That's the double edge sword of state socialism, it gives the poor a bit more but it reverses the path to the breaking point. And only temporarily until it is corrupted and overthrown.

Sorry, but this doesn't make sense, ALK. There are a lot of areas in the world where people do not have proper access to food, water, and other necessities, but we still live in an extremely imperialistic society. Hell, even in so called "first world" nations, there are people that do not have access to this stuff. Any change that occurs will be the result of the creation of infrastructure needed to run communist/anarchist communities. You were right when you said that people will begin to take what is theirs, however, the end of the ruling class will come from an organized proletariate. Not a scarcity situation.

[James]

Steve, on 07 June 2009 - 03:44 AM, said:

Sorry, but this doesn't make sense, ALK. There are a lot of areas in the world where people do not have proper access to food, water, and other necessities, but we still live in an extremely imperialistic society. Hell, even in so called "first world" nations, there are people that do not have access to this stuff. Any change that occurs will be the result of the creation of infrastructure needed to run communist/anarchist communities. You were right when you said that people will begin to take what is theirs, however, the end of the ruling class will come from an organized proletariate. Not a scarcity situation.

Exactly. Extreme scarcity breeds desperation, which results in violence and infighting. The last thing on the mass' minds when there is a lack of food will be political revolution; it will be simply be a question of where to get their next meal. What the world needs is organization, education, and enlightenment towards the assertion of power by the ruling class over the proletariate, not naked desperation and strife.

[James]

Steve, on 07 June 2009 - 03:44 AM, said:

Sorry, but this doesn't make sense, ALK. There are a lot of areas in the world where people do not have proper access to food, water, and other necessities, but we still live in an extremely imperialistic society. Hell, even in so called "first world" nations, there are people that do not have access to this stuff. Any change that occurs will be the result of the creation of infrastructure needed to run communist/anarchist communities. You were right when you said that people will begin to take what is theirs, however, the end of the ruling class will come from an organized proletariate. Not a scarcity situation.

Exactly. Extreme scarcity breeds desperation, which results in violence and infighting. The last thing on the mass' minds when there is a lack of food will be political revolution; it will be simply be a question of where to get their next meal. What the world needs is organization, education, and enlightenment towards the assertion of power by the ruling class over the proletariate, not naked desperation and strife.

[Adam]

Yeah Anarchy has a lot of flaws
All based on the fact so many people are greedy
In a prefect world anarchy would work
But people are taught by the "American Dream" styled media to make money is the ultimate goal in life
Rather than helping people and making the world work in balance

[NICKxSUTTON]

Adam, on 07 June 2009 - 01:33 PM, said:

Yeah Anarchy has a lot of flaws
All based on the fact so many people are greedy
In a prefect world anarchy would work
But people are taught by the "American Dream" styled media to make money is the ultimate goal in life
Rather than helping people and making the world work in balance

thats exactly what i said prepare to also burn on a stake.

[S/T]

Punk Rock Geek, on 06 June 2009 - 05:56 PM, said:

This I don't agree on at all.  World hunger is a product of capitalism.  There is enough food on this planet to easily sustain everyone.

ORLY?!  The world today is in better shape in terms of supporting its human inhabitants than ever before.  Want indisputable proof?  There are more people today than ever before in the history of the planet.  If you desire a world of gray sameness, get a bunch of like-minded folks together, buy some property, and start a commune.  That's fine.  Invite all the world's poor.  I'm sure there are some puritanical Christian types who would love to come along for the ride, slaving all day for the equal sustenance of all. Survive on what sustains you.  But please, leave the rationally-minded world to progress and indulge as it always has--if you're lucky maybe some of your type will remain in our world and skim off some of our excess to send you in the form of aid packages.

[NICKxSUTTON]

S/T, on 07 June 2009 - 02:11 PM, said:

ORLY?!  The world today is in better shape in terms of supporting its human inhabitants than ever before.  Want indisputable proof?  There are more people today than ever before in the history of the planet.  If you desire a world of gray sameness, get a bunch of like-minded folks together, buy some property, and start a commune.  That's fine.  Invite all the world's poor.  I'm sure there are some puritanical Christian types who would love to come along for the ride, slaving all day for the equal sustenance of all. Survive on what sustains you.  But please, leave the rationally-minded world to progress and indulge as it always has--if you're lucky maybe some of your type will remain in our world and skim off some of our excess to send you in the form of aid packages.

like i said not everybody is ready for anarchy.

[Punk Rock Geek]

S/T, on 07 June 2009 - 02:11 PM, said:

ORLY?!  The world today is in better shape in terms of supporting its human inhabitants than ever before.  Want indisputable proof?  There are more people today than ever before in the history of the planet.

That's quite a bold claim.  

"Ever before"?  Documentation of humanity in a time before masters and slaves is hard to find. I assume you have a good source?  It would also need to be understood that without education or even sufficient ability to communicate, humanity's desire to take care of one and other is not going to be very high up on the priorities list.  You also wouldn't know much, if anything about crop life cycles.  It's hard to make any meaningful comparisons then.

Beyond that, the total number of people that have food is really an irrelevant statistic, because if we really wanted to understand the differences that capitalism has made, we would need to look at this on a per capita basis.  (That is, as a percentage of people who are starving.)

[NICKxSUTTON]

Punk Rock Geek, on 07 June 2009 - 02:49 PM, said:

That's quite a bold claim.  

"Ever before"?  Documentation of humanity in a time before masters and slaves is hard to find. I assume you have a good source?  It would also need to be understood that without education or even sufficient ability to communicate, humanity's desire to take care of one and other is not going to be very high up on the priorities list.  You also wouldn't know much, if anything about crop life cycles.  It's hard to make any meaningful comparisons then.

Beyond that, the total number of people that have food is really an irrelevant statistic, because if we really wanted to understand the differences that capitalism has made, we would need to look at this on a per capita basis.  (That is, as a percentage of people who are starving.)

i like your arguement have you by any chance seen bill maher?

[S/T]

Punk Rock Geek, on 07 June 2009 - 02:49 PM, said:

That's quite a bold claim.  

"Ever before"?  Documentation of humanity in a time before masters and slaves is hard to find. I assume you have a good source?  It would also need to be understood that without education or even sufficient ability to communicate, humanity's desire to take care of one and other is not going to be very high up on the priorities list.  You also wouldn't know much, if anything about crop life cycles.  It's hard to make any meaningful comparisons then.

Beyond that, the total number of people that have food is really an irrelevant statistic, because if we really wanted to understand the differences that capitalism has made, we would need to look at this on a per capita basis.  (That is, as a percentage of people who are starving.)

It's not bold at all.  In fact, it's almost a truism.  The world's human population is higher today, at this very moment, than ever before.  A population requires certain conditions be met to continue its growth.  One of these conditions is food.  Ergo, higher population, more food.

[JohnWayneWasANazi]

S/T, on 07 June 2009 - 02:56 PM, said:

It's not bold at all.  In fact, it's almost a truism.  The world's human population is higher today, at this very moment, than ever before.  A population requires certain conditions be met to continue its growth.  One of these conditions is food.  Ergo, higher population, more food.

I'm not sure that I agree with you. If there were truly not enough food, yes, people would die. But, think of it this way (I'm sure you already have). Let's say that every 2 people on earth have 2 kids. So 2 kids/couple. 2^2=4 4^2=16 16^2=256. I'm just saying that it is inevitable that there will be more people with time.

[S/T]

JohnWayneWasANazi, on 07 June 2009 - 03:01 PM, said:

I'm not sure that I agree with you. If there were truly not enough food, yes, people would die. But, think of it this way (I'm sure you already have). Let's say that every 2 people on earth have 2 kids. So 2 kids/couple. 2^2=4 4^2=16 16^2=256. I'm just saying that it is inevitable that there will be more people with time.

As long as the conditions are in place to support those people.  If they aren't, the population growth will slow, and then turn negative.  Chapter one or two in any book on differential equations spells the fact out pretty clearly in universal language.

[Punk Rock Geek]

S/T, on 07 June 2009 - 03:06 PM, said:

As long as the conditions are in place to support those people.  If they aren't, the population growth will slow, and then turn negative.  Chapter one or two in any book on differential equations spells the fact out pretty clearly in universal language.

But really, the opposite is true.  In countries where conditions are poor, the national growth rate is mostly always high.  This is because people of poorer nations have more children.  (A couple of possible reasons:  poor birth control, necessity of children in order to work and bring home money.)

In countries that are well off, the growth rate is often times stagnant and low.  

Here's a good listing of each country by their population growth.
http://en.wikipedia....ion_growth_rate

[S/T]

Punk Rock Geek, on 07 June 2009 - 03:16 PM, said:

But really, the opposite is true.  In countries where conditions are poor, the national growth rate is mostly always high.  This is because people of poorer nations have more children.  (A couple of possible reasons:  poor birth control, necessity of children in order to work and bring home money.)

In countries that are well off, the growth rate is often times stagnant and low.  

Here's a good listing of each country by their population growth.
http://en.wikipedia....ion_growth_rate

Yes, I am quite aware that poorer nations tend to have more rapid population growth.  Poor doesn't equate to unsustainable.  It's not disputable that for a population to grow, the conditions that sustain it must be in place.  In places where the population grows more slowly than the conditions it requires for survival, there are excesses; luxuries.  This is good.  In places where the population out paces the increase in conditions required for survival, you have poverty.  This is bad.  We call this the third world.  The third world is NOT a product of capitalism.  The third world was what existed everywhere before industrialization, but populations were kept in check by limited resources.  The first world (i.e. the former case: growth of resources out paces growth of population) IS the result of capitalism--division of labor, specialization, et cetera, leads to more productive capacity leads to excess in basic goods leads to luxury.  When the excesses of the first world are sent to the third world, you get a population that grows beyond its natural means; you get the extreme poverty in the third word we see today.

[Punk Rock Geek]

S/T, on 07 June 2009 - 03:28 PM, said:

Yes, I am quite aware that poorer nations tend to have more rapid population growth.  Poor doesn't equate to unsustainable.  It's not disputable that for a population to grow, the conditions that sustain it must be in place.  In places where the population grows more slowly than the conditions it requires for survival, there are excesses; luxuries.  This is good.  In places where the population out paces the increase in conditions required for survival, you have poverty.  This is bad.  We call this the third world.  The third world is NOT a product of capitalism.  The third world was what existed everywhere before industrialization, but populations were kept in check by limited resources.  The first world (i.e. the former case: growth of resources out paces growth of population) IS the result of capitalism--division of labor, specialization, et cetera, leads to more productive capacity leads to excess in basic goods leads to luxury.  When the excesses of the first world are sent to the third world, you get a population that grows beyond its natural means; you get the extreme poverty in the third word we see today.

Right, poor doesn't equate to unsustainable.  Yet, population growth is high even in places that do suffer from mass hunger.  Surely, this is not your definition of sustainability?

But either way, let's get back to your original point, which was that the reason it would be unsustainable would be because there would not be enough workers.  Is that correct?

I think this has been repeated in this topic quite a bit, so I'll reiterate in summary.  Capitalism creates a lot of meaningless jobs that in an ideal system would be replaced with jobs ensuring everyone's needs were first met.  It also prevents those with the ability to provide for themselves (such as those with farming ability) from doing so without property.  Anarchism wouldn't get rid of work entirely, but it would definitely re-organize it.  See Parecon.

[Steve]

Adam, on 07 June 2009 - 01:33 PM, said:

Yeah Anarchy has a lot of flaws
All based on the fact so many people are greedy
In a prefect world anarchy would work
But people are taught by the "American Dream" styled media to make money is the ultimate goal in life
Rather than helping people and making the world work in balance

So what if people are greedy? I'm an anarchist because it's in my self interest. Anarchism means liberation of the working class, of which I am part. The idea that anarchism is some utopian idea is propaganda. It doesn't take into account the fact that there have been several working examples of anarchism/communism in the last 100 years, and the fact that people lived in what Marx called "primitive communism" for hundreds of thousands of years before we lived in hierarchical societies.

[Steve]

S/T, on 07 June 2009 - 03:28 PM, said:

Yes, I am quite aware that poorer nations tend to have more rapid population growth.  Poor doesn't equate to unsustainable.  It's not disputable that for a population to grow, the conditions that sustain it must be in place.  In places where the population grows more slowly than the conditions it requires for survival, there are excesses; luxuries.  This is good.  In places where the population out paces the increase in conditions required for survival, you have poverty.  This is bad.  We call this the third world.  The third world is NOT a product of capitalism.  The third world was what existed everywhere before industrialization, but populations were kept in check by limited resources.  The first world (i.e. the former case: growth of resources out paces growth of population) IS the result of capitalism--division of labor, specialization, et cetera, leads to more productive capacity leads to excess in basic goods leads to luxury.  When the excesses of the first world are sent to the third world, you get a population that grows beyond its natural means; you get the extreme poverty in the third word we see today.

So then the material conditions in the third world are a product of capitalism.

[SertraOD]

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ORLY?! The world today is in better shape in terms of supporting its human inhabitants than ever before. Want indisputable proof? There are more people today than ever before in the history of the planet.

That's far from indisputable proof and you're clearly obfuscating your point. The question of whether or not the world today is in better shape in terms of supporting its human inhabitants is a relative to how much the world is producing and how many people need to be sustained. The simple fact is that the worst sorts of poverty in the past have been amplified in to a world-wide norm. Besides grand epidemics like the black plague, the poor of the past could easily sustain themselves off of the land. They may have been simple, but they got by. Today that is not the case. The land is more often less fertile, polluted, and thus people depend on the economy. Of course, the first world demand for labor cannot satiate the demand for jobs in the third world. Thus, people become inescapably poor due to the capitalistic international market.

There is more in the world today, thus there is a greater population. However, there is also a great disparity between rich and poor--a factor you conveniently ignore.

Quote

If you desire a world of gray sameness, get a bunch of like-minded folks together, buy some property, and start a commune.

Quit obscuring the point by reducing complicated issues down to simplistic concepts. If you want grey sameness, perhaps you can take a look at how often you see a coca-cola advertisement, or how suburban neighborhoods seem entirely uniform.

You think this satiates our sense of injustice? You're saying that we have to gain capital in order to earn our right to sustain ourselves through our own self-directed labor?

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That's fine. Invite all the world's poor.

But then the area of property we buy will be disproportionate to the population. The division of resources wouldn't be even, thus our goal would not be achieve.

Not only that, you're suggesting that the poor should purchase their own ghetto from the elite. Not only that, but how can a large-scale community manage to grab hold of all that land when the market is saturated with separate owners and sellers? It's simply impossible. It's typical of a capitalist to offer these idealistic solutions because they are "theoretically feasible" but they're not based in reality at all.

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I'm sure there are some puritanical Christian types who would love to come along for the ride, slaving all day for the equal sustenance of all. Survive on what sustains you. But please, leave the rationally-minded world to progress and indulge as it always has--if you're lucky maybe some of your type will remain in our world and skim off some of our excess to send you in the form of aid packages.

How exactly is your indulgence rational? Do you realize all the shit that's happened that allows you to enjoy the products you enjoy? How about CIA backed coups, puppet governments, and inescapable national debt? Your indulgence depends on a third or second world person's willingness to work fifteen hour shifts for table scraps with no signs of an improving job market.

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Yes, I am quite aware that poorer nations tend to have more rapid population growth. Poor doesn't equate to unsustainable. It's not disputable that for a population to grow, the conditions that sustain it must be in place. In places where the population grows more slowly than the conditions it requires for survival, there are excesses; luxuries. This is good.

Who owns the luxuries? The excess value that's created goes to the elite of that country and to those who own the loans the country has taken--the luxuries go to America while the population is growing (due to a growing economy). Thus, the people grow in numbers like the ought to, but what they create to sustain themselves it taken away to America. That is where you get your wealth in this modern world.

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In places where the population out paces the increase in conditions required for survival, you have poverty. This is bad. We call this the third world. The third world is NOT a product of capitalism. The third world was what existed everywhere before industrialization, but populations were kept in check by limited resources.

That's rich. Good shit.

Do you honestly believe the third world of today looks like the third world three hundred years ago? Don't make me laugh. The third world has guns, dude. The third world has some industry. The third world has national government. These are not tribal people living off the land, these are ex-tribal people who have had their land taken from them because of the international capitalist fronts like the IMF. The third world today is a direct result of capitalism. Now that these countries are forced to enter an international market, those with the most capital will essentially own the country--now the land is not free to the people, thus they cannot sustain themselves as easily in traditional ways.

The third world is taking a place that exists outside of a capitalist market and turning it in to a giant industrial ghetto. That's how you create a market that can be tapped--you become the countries only source of sustenance. When the people try revolution, they're met with great foreign resistance (bay of pigs?).

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The first world (i.e. the former case: growth of resources out paces growth of population) IS the result of capitalism--division of labor, specialization, et cetera, leads to more productive capacity leads to excess in basic goods leads to luxury. When the excesses of the first world are sent to the third world, you get a population that grows beyond its natural means; you get the extreme poverty in the third word we see today.

Growth of resources we've taken from other countries.

Excesses of the first world? Those excesses were created in the third/second world in the first place. We're taking the third world's excess, not the other way around. They get our excess money, we get their excess goods. You see how manipulative that is? We'll give you some imaginary value for your labor and resources. What a joke.

[S/T]

Punk Rock Geek, on 07 June 2009 - 03:49 PM, said:

Right, poor doesn't equate to unsustainable.  Yet, population growth is high even in places that do suffer from mass hunger.  Surely, this is not your definition of sustainability?

But either way, let's get back to your original point, which was that the reason it would be unsustainable would be because there would not be enough workers.  Is that correct?

I think this has been repeated in this topic quite a bit, so I'll reiterate in summary.  Capitalism creates a lot of meaningless jobs that in an ideal system would be replaced with jobs ensuring everyone's needs were first met.  It also prevents those with the ability to provide for themselves (such as those with farming ability) from doing so without property.  Anarchism wouldn't get rid of work entirely, but it would definitely re-organize it.  See Parecon.

PRG, you are a nice enough guy, but so self-righteous sometimes.  "Meaningless" jobs?!  What a pompous (not to mention privileged) thing to say.  Would that be meaningless as in professional musician?  Meaningless as in administrator of an Anti-Flag fan forum?  The thing is, while you have every right to deem whatever you please "meaningless," and act accordingly, you don't have the right to make that determination for someone else--that, in a nutshell, is why a free, market based economy is morally superior to any form of planned economy.

Sertra, dammit, why'd you have to change sides?  I will start a new thread, we're way off topic.