Thread: Economic impacts on politics.

Originally Posted by Ramil

Crocodile, you're looking at everything in bad light. Moderate consumption can be easily satisfied without violence, etc.

I think I'm just being realistic and not idealistic. I think the term "moderate consumption" is very subjective. Is that necessary to drive a car? Depends, isn't it? Some people are ready to work really hard to get their two islands and a Moon. Why should they be fundamentally deprived of that right?

Originally Posted by Crocodile

I think I'm just being realistic and not idealistic. I think the term "moderate consumption" is very subjective. Is that necessary to drive a car? Depends, isn't it? Some people are ready to work really hard to get their two islands and a Moon. Why should they be fundamentally deprived of that right?

Why deprived? If there are spare islands and moons -- why not? The problem with capitalism, as many 'classics' before me have noticed is the competition. Oh, I admit, that this makes people try to make their goods better and cheaper, but from the other hand it creates production overtake. If you compare world's economy with a living organism, you'll probably get it with three hearts, several dozen legs and arms, two, maybe three heads, and shockingly -- several brains as well. This organism will probably be quite a survivor, but at the same time a grossly inefficient one.

The surplus production, however, has to be consumed and thus they start building things that would last for probably a year or little more (I know it since my mobile phones stop working regularly every year). Millions of people produce these assorted surpluses (creating pollution and spending the valuable resources along the way, some of which are even non-renewable). Isn't it a shame that we have starving people on a planet where more than enough food is produced to feed everyone?

Originally Posted by Hanna

1. Producing all these products and shipping them to market takes a terrible toll on the planet.
2. I agree that the socialist states had (have) environmental issues. But they were of a different nature, perhaps not quite as serious on a global scale.

Ok, I see what you say and I partially agree. So, what you're saying is true with a very big B-U-T. But the socialist states would produce much less products and services with much less efficiency taking comparable toll on the ecology. For example: compare the lowest commercial gasoline octane rating in the Europe/North America and in the SU. Who was quicker to implement the alternatives to the CFCs - the Europe/North America or the SU?

Originally Posted by Hanna

Plus, we've already said here that 'communism' as in Eastern Europe was derailed from the ideal.

I think that 'derailing' was in a much more humane direction promoting more inequality and less social justice. Let me explain myself. The classic communism strives to: (i) eliminate private property, (ii) eliminate exploitation of a person by a person substituting that with the exploitation of a person by the government, and (iii) enforce the equal distribution of goods and services. Accoring to the classical communism, family is one of the ways of exploitation of a wife by her husband and children by their parents, so the so-called 'institution of family' should be elimnated as part of the communization of the entire society. There should be the commune of free wives and the children should be 'parented' by the designated governmental institutions and not by their parents. The 'derailed' Eastern European version of the communism was much more humane in that respect and has not enforced the separation of the existing families. Instead of the 'elimination of the institution of family' a new less orthodox principle was invented that 'the family is a cell of the society' and so the families were kept together. (Thanks God!) There are other examples demonstrating the relatively humane nature of the Eastern European version of the communism.

Originally Posted by Ramil

Why deprived? If there are spare islands and moons -- why not?

That's the whole point. There will always be resources to compete for. Two men love the same woman. And what had the communists proposed in that case? Let's share, right?

Originally Posted by Ramil

Isn't it a shame that we have starving people on a planet where more than enough food is produced to feed everyone?

It would have been much more shameful had the majority of the starving people done something with their outrageous corruption and stopped killing each other with the weapons invented, produced and delivered to the starving people by the non-starving people.