Textpattern CMS support forum
You are not logged in. Register | Login | Help
- Topics: Active | Unanswered
Re: The confusing math of humanity
michaelkpate wrote #312998:
Fact: The World is a much better place than it was prior to the Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and the rise of Capitalism.
Fact: That’s a ‘no duh’ statement and irrelevant to what I’m talking about. ;)
We enjoy comforts they didn’t have last century and so on back to the hunter and gatherers. Call it discovery, or trial-by-fire, as science might like it, but it’s a simple concept taught in every school. On the contrary I agreed with your tangential input with my tongue-in-cheek whiskey and nail puller remark.
Maybe we’re talking past each other. You seem rather focused on the comforts of now and not too concerned with the discomforts that will be coming in another century. The future, Michael, is what I’m talking about, not the past.
Also, I don’t give two chicken necks about any *ism except environmentalism (that it’s been co-opted by the neoliberals is not lost on me). By extension, I’m not obsessed with OSE’s notion of ‘a third economic option beyond capitalism or socialism’, if that’s where you’re coming from by saying I’m advocating for something. Maybe you’ve jumped to a conclusion about what I’m actually advocating.
What am I advocating for? ‘Responsible use of technology’, which is what OSE (a startup, btw, not a political philosphy) is about, quoted from source. That’s what I’m advocating here, if anything. Most technology, while remarkable in some respects over a short term (the invention of gasoline, for example) is not used responsibly (i.e. not much at all) and overall destructive compared to the small benefits it provides in a window of time, and that’s what the anthropocene is all about. Deny it all you want (a rhetorical statement) but it changes nothing.
But let’s taper it down, not talk at such grand scales, which are meaningless…
OSE’s project is good because it allows people to create, use, and fix machinery without lock-in to the thieving capitalist corporations (like John Deere, for example) that literally force blue collar folk into expensive, proprietary parts/services schemes. Cars (more necessary evil tech) are practically the same way now, and every other stupid IoT piece of surveillance crap.
I’m also in favour Purism computers, open source hardware, and I’d hope that will help me repair my own computer too without putting more money into Apple’s coffer, or whatever. Is that grounds for talking about global economic models too? Well, I guess everything is part of the ecology but let’s not get carried away. We can think and do locally, ethically, and still poke fun at the billionaires.
Offline
Re: The confusing math of humanity
colak wrote #313008:
Also, I do not really believe the rhetoric that capitalism rose out of Mercantilism – although many books support this view. Capitalism to me, came out of colonialism, where resources (especially in the west) were no longer limited to what it could be produced or traded but expanded to the ones beyond the borders. This of course meant/means, draining those resources from local populations, historically from Africa, South-East Asia and South America but also the Middle and Near East which is currently tormented by wars transparently being encouraged for the control and endless appetite for fossil fuels by the west.
Mercantilism/Colonialism – We conquer a foreign land, extract resources, take them back to our country and reshape them into finished goods in our factories, and then sell them back to our territorial conquests at inflated prices.
Capitalism – We come up with ideas for new products, have them produced in foreign factories by near slave labor at the cheapest possible price, and them sell them whenever we can find a market.
Unfortunately the disparities caused by capitalism are much larger than those by Feudalism whilst the current vectorial class (a natural evolution of capitalism) is by far the most powerful and offers the most unfair distribution of resources.
Your average 13th century Peasant Farmer was probably closer in wealth to his King than the average person to Jeff Bezos. Depending on how you look at it (whether he actually owned anything at all).
You can chalk that up to Economic Growth. Now whether that is fair is a different question. I don’t feel qualified to decided how much someone should be allowed to have.
Offline
Re: The confusing math of humanity
zero wrote #313017:
What does everybody want? Peace. No, not money, power, prestige and luxury – because people only want these because they think they will bring them the high they are looking for. But they don’t bring the true high. People think they need more and more and more of their desire fulfilling. But they find they don’t get the true fulfillment, only something temporary. And so it goes on — they keep trying to find their ultimate in the world outside them.
Peace is great. I grew up in the 1970’s when the Super Friends promised to fight for “Truth, Justice, and Peace for all mankind.”
“The security of Rome’s frontiers was based on dominating her neighbours, very much in keeping with the belief that peace came from Roman victory. Rome was to be feared, which meant that her might was paraded as a constant reminder of her strength, while attackers were dealt with ruthlessly and the communities believed to support them ravaged with fire and sword.” – Adrian Goldsworthy
Personally, though, I would rank Liberty above Peace.
Offline
Re: The confusing math of humanity
michaelkpate wrote #313022:
Peace is great. I grew up in the 1970’s when the Super Friends promised to fight for “Truth, Justice, and Peace for all mankind.”
Personally, though, I would rank Liberty above Peace.
Lots of people and groups have been “fighting” for peace for all time, and good on ‘em. I think you’ll find though that they were/are fighting for absence of external wars which most people think peace is. I’m talking about striving for absence of internal wars, the war against ourself which rages on day and night which even if we win it, we lose (because it’s a war). Peace is there when the inner turmoil stops, but it is not just absence of turmoil, it is a tangible, real thing, a beautiful feeling (and much more). Peace is Liberty is Justice is Truth. But it must be experienced or my words make no sense whatsoever. Without the experience of Peace, my words are just more ripples in the turmoil. But I’m not talking in riddles, peace is possible for everyone. Follow links at premrawat.com and if you want it you can have peace.
Offline