[Ibon]

The decadence then moves from indolence to a much deeper disconnect from physical reality and that is what we now see here in the emerging generation with their dependency with their digital devices. Your physical environment, your location, becomes irrelevant. An alternative cyber ecosystem starts dominating the world of modern young people. This is the latest manifestation of consumption decadence that I have outlined here moving from Status to indolence to cyber pathology.

I am wondering if a big part of the narcissistic escapism and indulgence into the alternative cyber reality for the emerging generation is that they all know intuitively that the external physical world is fraught with severe imbalances beyond our collective control.... In an increasingly chaotic world it is easy to escape into a cyber reality that provides the illusion of choice and control. This cyber pathology is actually an attempt to feel in control. Misguided but understandable.

Short lived in my opinion since the external which we seem to be hellbent on ignoring will provide the consequences which will break this indolence and escapism. This is a most temporary phenomenon.

[Ibon]

PS the canonical "seven deadly sins" are pride , envy ,wrath , sloth , greed ,gluttony , and lust
I plead guilty for six of them

It's funny to think how the fossil fuel age allowed these basic seven deadly sins to flourish

Pride and envy = Status symbols of materialism and consumption
Sloth = the indolence that increases with materialism
greed = unbridled quest for money
gluttony = look at global obesity rates on the rise
lust and wrath = in spite of internet porn and violent video games these two are always there regardless of our political or economic system due to the lizard pituitary gland sitting just under our cerebral cortex. These two are primal and independent of consumption.

[Tanada]

The decadence then moves from indolence to a much deeper disconnect from physical reality and that is what we now see here in the emerging generation with their dependency with their digital devices. Your physical environment, your location, becomes irrelevant. An alternative cyber ecosystem starts dominating the world of modern young people. This is the latest manifestation of consumption decadence that I have outlined here moving from Status to indolence to cyber pathology.

I am wondering if a big part of the narcissistic escapism and indulgence into the alternative cyber reality for the emerging generation is that they all know intuitively that the external physical world is fraught with severe imbalances beyond our collective control.... In an increasingly chaotic world it is easy to escape into a cyber reality that provides the illusion of choice and control. This cyber pathology is actually an attempt to feel in control. Misguided but understandable.

Short lived in my opinion since the external which we seem to be hellbent on ignoring will provide the consequences which will break this indolence and escapism. This is a most temporary phenomenon.

I was listening to a review of a classic 1992 computer game a couple days ago where the hosts were comparing it to modern games. The aspect they found most surprising was the game style up from the first games in the 1970's through the mid 1990's were games of skills and puzzles. The designers would create a game and publish it, and if you were smart and determined enough you would learn all the tricks or figure out all the puzzles to get the highest score. The game designers back then made games to challenge the player, make them prove themselves better than anyone else playing the same game. Games written starting in the Aughties are no longer written that way, modern game design is for everyone to win. If there is a puzzle and you get stuck the game starts dropping hints on how to beat it, and if that doesn't work the internet offers detailed information on how to beat every stage and step of the game. Games used to be like life, if you invested time your reward was doing better than your buddy who was also playing. Now they are just designed as a virtual world where no matter how poorly you achieve eventually you make it to the end goal. The only competitive games left are the multi-player games.

If your real life has challenges you feel ill equipped to meet like working and paying rent how seductive is it to spend all your spare time in a game where the system is designed to give you ego boosts no matter how poorly you play?

[Timo]

The game designers back then made games to challenge the player, make them prove themselves better than anyone else playing the same game. Games written starting in the Aughties are no longer written that way, modern game design is for everyone to win. If there is a puzzle and you get stuck the game starts dropping hints on how to beat it, and if that doesn't work the internet offers detailed information on how to beat every stage and step of the game. Games used to be like life, if you invested time your reward was doing better than your buddy who was also playing. Now they are just designed as a virtual world where no matter how poorly you achieve eventually you make it to the end goal. The only competitive games left are the multi-player games.

Two things T:
#1, thanks for your description of the change in the system of loans back in 1913. Subconsciously, I think we all knew what happened, but you put that event into words that are easily understood. Well done! That said, I honestly don't know which system to consider superior to the other. It's a debtor's prison v Repo Man conundrum. The prior system did prevent people from living beyond their means, for the most part. On the other hand,.......well, i'll stick with that hand, for now.
#2, regarding the new template for writing computer games, well, the first thing that came to my mind was the absolute insistence of educators across the US demanding that "Everyone is a winner! Recognizing everyone as a winner is essential for the development and maintenance of personal self-esteem." In other words, our teachers have dumbed down our curriculum so that everyone feels good about themselves for "winning."

When I lived in Chile, I attended colegio (high school) as a senior, AFTER I had already graduated high school here in the States, and AFTER I had already attended one semester of college. I went back to high school, which was great because academics and getting a passing grade in anything absolutely did not matter. I failed English! While I was there, though, during the last quarter of the school year, the character and behaviors of ALL of my classmates changed dramatically. This change in their behavior was never present in my classmates here in the States during the same time-period of the school year. My Chilean classmates had University entrance exams to prepare for! These exams were vastly different from the standard ACT and SAT exams seniors take to get into college here in the States. Up here, entrance to a university is almost considered an entitlement, especially at a public university. Down there, not so. Public universities were very difficult to get into. That's where the public money went, and the public demanded only the best of the best. They didn't waste their money on educating the wannabes. That job was left for the private universities. Most of my classmates did pass their exams. A few did not, and failure in that endeavor was devastating to them. But, life went on. They decided to study a useful curriculum, either in a trade school, or a private university. Failure was not the end of the world.

Getting back to the American system, our educators treat failure as the end of any possible future for their students. Passing even the easiest exams is critical for every student's future. Failure is not an option, unless, of course, the student decides to drop out of school. In that case, out of sight, out of mind.

I guess what I'm ending up doing here is equating our educational system to the indolence of our educators. Everyone passes! Everyone "deserves" the self-esteem to be considered a winner. We'll lower our educational standards to ensure that every student graduates with their head held up high, full of useless BS. After high school, those clueless masses are the responsibility of our legal and welfare systems.

There was a time when education in the US actually meant something.

If your real life has challenges you feel ill equipped to meet like working and paying rent how seductive is it to spend all your spare time in a game where the system is designed to give you ego boosts no matter how poorly you play?

Millenials!

[Ibon]

#2, regarding the new template for writing computer games, well, the first thing that came to my mind was the absolute insistence of educators across the US demanding that "Everyone is a winner! Recognizing everyone as a winner is essential for the development and maintenance of personal self-esteem." In other words, our teachers have dumbed down our curriculum so that everyone feels good about themselves for "winning."

That was the first thing that also came to my mind reading T's post.

When I lived in Chile, I attended colegio (high school) as a senior, AFTER I had already graduated high school here in the States, and AFTER I had already attended one semester of college.

This change in their behavior was never present in my classmates here in the States during the same time-period of the school year.

I have another anecdotal story to add here. My daughter graduated from high school in Seattle. She was on the national honor society. She went to the university in The Phillipines afterwards and on her freshmen placement exams she got 7 correct out of a hundred on her math test. This was a real blow for her as she prided herself in her academic excellence in the US. As Timo pointed out in Chile, the competition in the Philippines to get in the University is so severe that students already in Junior high are taking advance placement courses outside of normal school to increase their chances.

Getting back to the American system, our educators treat failure as the end of any possible future for their students. Passing even the easiest exams is critical for every student's future. Failure is not an option.

Consider for a moment that failure is exactly one of the fundamental tenants of natural selection. Weeded out of any population are those individuals that lack the competitive edge in the game of life. Now consider the indolence we are speaking of here and how this "debilitating compassion" is rampant through our society.


In this context isn't worshiping The Overshoot Predator a more compassionate position?

If your real life has challenges you feel ill equipped to meet like working and paying rent how seductive is it to spend all your spare time in a game where the system is designed to give you ego boosts no matter how poorly you play?

Millenials!

Come on Timo, classic oldster calling those youngins Slackers.......... there are some Millenials who will plant a pot of basil on their porch and convince themselves they are instant permaculture experts as they pick one leaf and put it in their salad as they eat a bowl of gruel while staring in their Ipod....

but we shouldn't stereotype

[evilgenius]

A few things:

1). The population of the world is expected to stop growing at about the nine billion level some time around 2060, maybe earlier. This isn't predicted because the people who said it thought we would reach carrying capacity, but because women will become empowered enough by then to say 'no'. Things like women's rights and micro-loans will do it.

2). Capitalism destroys the earth because the earth is not its object. The discovery of price is its object. For this, in every way, it depends upon the historical action of money and the anticipation of what that means for the valuation of that money going forward. No human motivation other than the love of money really comes into the picture. Capitalism is really nothing more than the evolutionary paradigm at work, able to try out various avenues for success and choose the best one(s).

Since the essence of money is debt, which comes with an obligation to pay it or an individual cannot participate fully any further, there is no motivation to consider any scheme which diverts personal resources, paying of attention to what a person has to do in order to pay off debt, such that their debt is in danger of not getting repaid. Obligations toward others; children, parents, causes, etc., compel people to incur debt, but no single one is recognized by the system of debt as its master, neither does the system recognize the need to pay homage to any of them.

3). Without the modern fiat debt based monetary system in existence today the world would be a dire place. The Federal Reserve, and, indeed, all similar central banks, arose as a counter to the extreme boom and bust cycles of the day. The mandate they were created under was to achieve some kind of control over those cycles. Under that mandate the Fed and other central bankers are charged with learning more all the time about how to alleviate the pain of the business cycle and provide a more stable economic environment for business to transact. In order to do this they have had to discover the importance of various aspects which make up the functioning components of the economies they have charge over, ranking their importance for attention. This is how interests, like those of labor or investors receive a voice, because the Fed has to act in their interest or the system will become unstable.

4). Marx thought that the industrial revolution had brought about the kind of abundance that, if we could just see to share it, would end man's slavery. He was looking for an end to the Hegelian view that everything contains the seeds of its own destruction. He didn't offer this in an effort to change the direction of time, but to seek a kind of 'end of history'. His take on Hegelian thought was very much evolutionary. He didn't advocate going backward. In this sense he advocated that capitalism would evolve into communism. Further, he thought that when the time came the situation would be more or less obvious, with a little prompting on his part - no doubt. He didn't advocate for a backward place like Russia to take up the torch, but for his beloved Germany to do so. He thought they were advanced enough to pull it off.

In this context the answer you are looking for is not an alternative to capitalism, but a new evolutionary step. Throwing out what is working, even if it doesn't work with 100% efficiency is not a good idea. Neither is failing to see what is wrong. What is wrong, obviously, is that human motivations are not included within the debate, only those of money. Despite inventions like the Fed the system is still glaringly inhuman, and has no regard for the state of the planet. Gold standards and bitcoins are no solution either. They offer either a retreat toward the past or an artificial wall which doesn't address the root problem, and creates the conditions for a newer and more special kind of hell for those stuck within it.

To reform capitalism you have to reform the structure of corporations. Any effective reform will use the lessons that democracy in the political world has learned because the issue is philosophical control of said corporations. That kind of control is in the hands of those whose common interests determine them to have the most money at stake. Currently, that common interest is far shorter term than what is necessary to save the planet.

To reform capitalism in the manner necessary would require, therefore, the creation of a whole new class of stock, one with an inherently long-term interest. Furthermore, this class of stock would have to enjoy real power vis a vis its relationship toward those which are naturally more powerful within the known context. It would have to do this without supplanting them. It would have to act as the left hand, while the Fed is the right.

The answer is pretty simple then, you have to create a class of stock within publicly held corporations that derives its return from the money available for executives of those corporations to receive payment, whether both regular or only bonus pay I'm not sure. Collectively the holders of this new class of stock would vote not as to how much they thought the executives should receive, but as to how much out of the total available monies they should. What was left over the executives would receive. Over time a relationship would develop. The holders of the new class of stock would only hurt themselves in the long-term if they took too much of the money. They would always be incentivized to take as much as they could. This inverse relationship, using human nature rather than trying to whitewash or deny it, would bring a new more human balance over time to capitalism.

[KrellEnergySource]

I know the alternative that I would like to see:

Green Democratic Communism

All it is going to take is for the vast majority of the world to value the following:
1) Sustaining or restoring or improving the ecosystem
2) Valuing having THE voice in how things are run rather than being dictated to by those in 'power'
3) Agreeing with me that the sharing of materials and labor, while increasing freedom of speech and freedom of expression, is the only way we can collectively slow down rather than speed up consumption and production, breaking the cycle of wealth and poverty.

Not holding my breath, so also not holding out much hope for getting through the near future. The frenzy is like a wildfire that will eventually burn out.

Brian

[onlooker]

Good points Krell

[Cog]

I know the alternative that I would like to see:

Green Democratic Communism

Well at least you are honest about the type of world you want. The question is how many people are you willing to execute to make it happen?

[KrellEnergySource]

Well at least you are honest about the type of world you want. The question is how many people are you willing to execute to make it happen?

I'd think that would be a democratic decision, as codified in laws made by the society. What does the sustainable society decide to do with dissenters that believe in their God-given right to consume or desecrate as much as they want? What happens to people that hoard or choose to participate in black markets? Ideally, they would continue to be granted the ability to voice their opposition to whatever they see as problems with individual rights vs. society. I really do believe in freedom of expression. But if they do the behaviors that are damaging to current and future generations, then something, again ideally, would need to be done to discourage that, stop that, or punish that.

This outlier issue is the fodder of science fiction worlds, but it's a very difficult question to answer. But, for me, it has to be a collective decision, and that requires participation and interest by the majority and those affected. Gulags and death squads cab be seen as a symptom of concentrated power trying to deal with dissenters in the history of China and the Soviet Union, by my understanding. Who wants that? Nobody. But what DO 'we' want? A future that's better seven generations from now by some measures or to get what we need and what we want now and the hell with the future?

'We' want our stuff. Like the Bluetooth speaker I just ordered. It's really cool. Not sure how it's manufactured.......

But sometimes, I wish we were on a different course. I still sing Kum-ba-yah every now and then.

Brian

[Cog]

There is a very good reason the Founders designed a Constitutional republic and not a democracy. To prevent the majority mob from denying individual liberty. Which is exactly what your regime's people's tribunal would do. All in the name of some nebulous future generation's desires or needs.

No thanks. I swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic and that oath never expired for me.

Have your revolution but don't be surprised when you get some blowback.

[KrellEnergySource]

I didn't hear myself advocating revolution. I heard myself voting in representatives in a democracy, having a governent of the people, by the people, and for the people. And the electorate wanting something different than what we have now, and having a concern for their children and their children's children.

You may have missed where I'm also pro liberty. I took the same oath in 1978.

Brian

[Oneaboveall]

I posted this thread almost 4 years ago. It was a link to a Jacobin article that speculated on the world's four possible futures after the end of capitalism:

post1099215.html#p1099215

Here's the link to the original article: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2011/12/four-futures/

And a repost of my original post:

...One thing we can be certain of is that capitalism will end. Maybe not soon, but probably before too long; humanity has never before managed to craft an eternal social system, after all, and capitalism is a notably more precarious and volatile order than most of those that preceded it. The question, then, is what will come next. Rosa Luxemburg, reacting to the beginnings of World War I, cited a line from Engels: “Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.” In that spirit I offer a thought experiment, an attempt to make sense of our possible futures. These are a few of the socialisms we may reach if a resurgent Left is successful, and the barbarisms we may be consigned to if we fail...

The author then goes on to list the four possible systems as follows:

Egalitarianism and Abundance: Communism
Hierarchy and Abundance: Rentism
Egalitarianism and Scarcity: Socialism
Hierarchy and Scarcity: Exterminism

[Cog]

I didn't hear myself advocating revolution. I heard myself voting in representatives in a democracy, having a governent of the people, by the people, and for the people. And the electorate wanting something different than what we have now, and having a concern for their children and their children's children.

You may have missed where I'm also pro liberty. I took the same oath in 1978.

Brian

You must have missed the part where we don't live in a democracy, we live in a Constitutional republic. A distinct difference that you will need to overcome with force. Your way will lead to tyranny of the mob. Always has.

[KrellEnergySource]

Cog, I know we live in a Constitutional republic. I've pledged allegiance to it thousands of times.

Can a constitution be changed without the use of force? Yes. By amendments and even by a constitutional convention if desired. We can grow in territory, like we did in 1959. Where do you get the notion that I am even hinting at any advocacy of the use of force? I am not. The Bill of Rights does not include the right to have a giant plastic snow globe on your lawn at Christmas. There is room for discussion of consumption and production. We have low flow shower heads required for new construction for rich and poor alike. Tom Selleck does not have the right to more water than others, to give a recent example of limits being enforced by the Republic of California.

I am not advocating tyranny of the mob, any more than tyranny of the powerful. I am genuinely concerned for my children, who may be having their own children any year now, and a hope for all of them to have an opportunity for health and time for meaningful relationships in their lives. I am not convinced we're on a path that allows that, even remotely.

Brian

[Timo]

Millenials!

Come on Timo, classic oldster calling those youngins Slackers.......... there are some Millenials who will plant a pot of basil on their porch and convince themselves they are instant permaculture experts as they pick one leaf and put it in their salad as they eat a bowl of gruel while staring in their Ipod....

but we shouldn't stereotype

Touche, Ibon. Guilty as insinuated. And I'm as slacker as they get. I have fully embraced being an X, and I guess a part of being an X is some automatic respect for millenials. They are the renegades that I always wanted to be, but growing up on the heels of the Boomers, I had expectations to live up to. Most millenials I know just say Fu*k it! They are not interested in the faux "get rich quick" schemes. They seem to have a keen awareness of the failures and misinterpretations of success that have dominated Boomer society. I know I complain that millenials are glued to the cell phones, and for the most part, they are. Their Boomer parents got them started with cell phones at a very early age to serve as a very cheap and easy baby sitter. Be that as it may, however, I get a sense that millenials are simply much more genuine in their expectations of life, and expect a genuine environment to live in. Nothing fancy, but simply real. No suburban dreams. Who cares about a Mercedes! The bus or a bike works just as well, and it doesn't require a mortgage to pay for it. Ibon, you mentioned planting basil as proof of their permaculture expertise. Well, across the entire country, there is a boom in the establishment of urban community gardens, thanks to millenials. And the remnant Boomer hippies, of course. It seems to me that millenials are passively showing the boomers the errors of their ways.

It's as simple as a swipe to the right, or a swipe to the left. Any two year old can do it.

[americandream]

There are no alternatives other than subjectivity based regression (which is very unlikely as merit based privilege is unlikely to hand the keys over to hereditary privilege and were the conditions to arise for a brief flurry of heritance advantage, capitalism and the planet will be imminently close to collapse and mass extinction) and failure of the conscientising pathway or scientific socialism (call it what you like....socialism, communism, green socialism, socialism with frilly edges, whatever) and of course what necessarily follows. Capitalism contains the seeds of objective community but of course also has the residue of privilege following on from feudalism in merit based privilege hence the dialectic quality of systemic history.

There are no generational qualities to the conscientising process as capitalism presents at the moment. Evolution of course contemplates full objectivity after the formative dependent years have passed, subject of course to the cultural system. It is of course this cultural dynamic that underlay the Protestant birthing of the republican and merit based process worldwide including America and of course, evolution contemplates similar agents for its next dialectic phase. In the meantime, as you can see we are still in our own version of Ludditism or reaction. Revolution harnesses dialecticism, reaction seeks to halt it.

Time will tell though, given the magnitude of the risk with global capitalism, time is not quite on our side any longer.

edit: The italicisation merely clarifies the preceding point and is intended to emphasis the bracketing.

[Pops]

Good points evil.

I think the biggest threat to human persons are corporate persons with no responsibilities except profit, protecting investors and jiggering governments to do their bidding.

I don't see anyone here complaining about the benefits of capitalism. No one piped up to brag how they've given over all their capitalistic possessions and joined a commune and forsaken the material world provided them by capitalism. Lots of tsk tsking and spechifying tho, LoL

Capitalism is just about inseparable from its components; free markets, personal property and laws to protect individual rights. So what parts will you all eliminate?
The market?
Personal property?
Laws protecting the individual?

If you eliminate markets then how do you allocate stuff?
If you are going to elect allocators, how do you draw the line at their power?
How do you keep their thumbs off the scales?


As you all know and verify by your continued participation; profit, markets, this or that currency, even whatever brand of politics is not the real problem. The problem is the unlimited power of corporations — increasingly supranational "states" really, and their single-minded purpose of profiting while shielding "investors" from any risk beyond their monetary investment. The increasing fraction of the economy represented by "finance" is the tell, human oriented goods and services are falling by the way, money itself is the "product".

The more corps become persons the less important persons become.


I've had the 2 links in my sig on and off for a while, MoveToAmend.org is for a constitutional ammendment to state corps aren't persons and only humans have rights protected by the constitution. I'd go further and make any investor personally responsible for the actions of the corporations they invest in.

And Lizzy.

[onlooker]

Without the modern fiat debt based monetary system in existence today the world would be a dire place. The Federal Reserve, and, indeed, all similar central banks, arose as a counter to the extreme boom and bust cycles of the day. The mandate they were created under was to achieve some kind of control over those cycles. Under that mandate the Fed and other central bankers are charged with learning more all the time about how to alleviate the pain of the business cycle and provide a more stable economic environment for business to transact. In order to do this they have had to discover the importance of various aspects which make up the functioning components of the economies they have charge over, ranking their importance for attention. This is how interests, like those of labor or investors receive a voice, because the Fed has to act in their interest or the system will become unstable.

This is outright nonsense. The Fed and other Central banks did not arise to counter boom bust cycles they create them. For it is they who profit most from them. Ever since the first one arose the Bank of England they are in the business of loaning out money with interest in a practically unlimited manner. They have been catalysts and instrumental in igniting wars for the sake of profit and to entrench the central bank system upon countries. They were directly involved in creating the Great Depression. They have never acted for the benefit of ordinary individuals or even countries. Their sole purpose is profit and gain which by the way they share with corporations who also act in such a despicable way for the most part. This whole debt based system is in fact the worst outgrowth of capitalism and the perhaps the main reason we have so disregarded protecting the interests of the Earth and it's citizens. It has enslaved countries, companies and private individuals to debt. Banks like Corporations now have NO allegiance to anybody but to their insatiable desire for money and power. I think you have read too much the orthodox books that try and highlight the good of this system and ignore the bad.

[Pops]

Deflation is when currency becomes more valuable and everything you own becomes less. There were terrible deflation cycles in the 18th & 19th centuries as the population grew and the economy expanded.
When the money supply is constant it doesn't eliminate business cycles or over investment, it just means the value of assets fluctuates rather than the value of money.

Imagine the increase in the value of a dollar (and the diminished value of everything you own) with the population increasing 600% the last hundred years and the huge increase in material goods.