Oil & Gas shortages will lead to poverty and fascism

[kyser_soze]

So, nino, Fruitloop and jaed...which one of you was last to visit Cuba then? Since you all have an opinion on what Cubans think, their standard of living etc I expect all of you have spent a lot of time there recently...

 

[jæd]

I can certainly think of a few. Fortunately not all of us have your limited imagination, otherwise we'd all still be serfs and vassals.

Any chance of posting them up...?

 

[Fruitloop]

So, nino, Fruitloop and jaed...which one of you was last to visit Cuba then? Since you all have an opinion on what Cubans think, their standard of living etc I expect all of you have spent a lot of time there recently...

It's been three years to be honest.

 

[jæd]

So, nino, Fruitloop and jaed...which one of you was last to visit Cuba then? Since you all have an opinion on what Cubans think, their standard of living etc I expect all of you have spent a lot of time there recently...

My impressions of Cuba are from friends who've visited and what I hear from published sources. Obviously the Cubans should do what they want to do, but I'm thinking most people want to be free and live in the society they have a hand in...

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

I can certainly think of a few. Fortunately not all of us have your limited imagination, otherwise we'd all still be serfs and vassals.

When did we stop being serfs and vassels? I must have missed the memo.

 

[Fruitloop]

Any chance of posting them up...?

Sure. My top three are anarcho-syndicalism (link), participatory economics (link) and libertarian communism (link). All three share features in common with each other (compared to capitalism), although there exponents probably see more difference than similarity.

 

[Fruitloop]

When did we stop being serfs and vassels? I must have missed the memo.

Ha! You're not exactly wrong.

 

[slaar]

My impressions of Cuba are from friends who've visited and what I hear from published sources. Obviously the Cubans should do what they want to do, but I'm thinking most people want to be free and live in the society they have a hand in...

Sure. But that change has to come from within, it's very rare that outside intervention doesn't make things worse. When the Cuban people decide they want change enough, if they do, then it will happen. Sanctions and other impediments to the free movement of ideas and people don't exactly help.

On the other point, O'm not sure huge numbers of people have said that capitalism is in any way inevitable, or is the perfect embodiment of human reason. But it has been very useful in building productive capacity, if at great cost. What's needed now is where the world goes from here, not breaking everything down and starting again because that doesn't have a great track record.

 

[Fruitloop]

Sure. I am not of the 'tear it up and start again' school by any means.

 

[kyser_soze]

I was thinking exactly the same thing about the serfs and vassals bit.

AFAIC 'capitalism' is, on the whole, nothing more than a form of industrial feudalism, and that while the superstructure of society has altered to take account of technology driven change and a gradual change in the balance of power relationships in society (e.g. - land ownership - used to be the principle currency of power, now a currency of control over those who have bought into it's old image (i.e got a mortgage and now own a piece of land), for one group of the new barons, the banks), but the essential underlying set of relationships, of dominant and dominated groups, hasn't changed since...well about 6,000 years when the pharonic model of government seems to have taken root as the principle method of managing large scale civilisatoins.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

"Massive" numbers are more likely to die from global warming than lack of fossil fuels. Fuels will run out gradually, with them never 100% running out. Oil will just be too expensive to think about using it in cars...

I'm not seeing how the method of our destruction matters. The point still is that I think we're "weedy" enough to survive as a species, but a lot of peeps will kick it. (Sadly, us losing our current level of technology may be the best thing for the planet) A lot of other less "weedy" species will become extinct.

It still won't be happy and we still should do what we can to avoid it if we possibly can.

 

[Fruitloop]

I was thinking exactly the same thing about the serfs and vassals bit.

AFAIC 'capitalism' is, on the whole, nothing more than a form of industrial feudalism, and that while the superstructure of society has altered to take account of technology driven change and a gradual change in the balance of power relationships in society (e.g. - land ownership - used to be the principle currency of power, now a currency of control over those who have bought into it's old image (i.e got a mortgage and now own a piece of land), for one group of the new barons, the banks), but the essential underlying set of relationships, of dominant and dominated groups, hasn't changed since...well about 6,000 years when the pharonic model of government seems to have taken root as the principle method of managing large scale civilisatoins.

I dunno, there are certainly similarities but there are also differences. Under a feudal system or whatever the products of your labour aren't your own, but they do belong to a specific group of people. Capitalism abstracts this ownership in a novel way - it creates a field of economics that is distinct from actually-existing goods and services, and allows the development of huge corporate entities that aren't directly under the control of any particular person, that can behave in a way that no single employee or shareholder of the company would necessarily agree with.

You're right to say that the overall effect however is to maintain the same power relations between classes, it's just the means of doing so that are different.