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6 hours ago, OftenWrong said:

He's an arrogant ass speaking from a position of power and comfort. "Becoming well-adjusted DESPITE a sick society is a sign of good mental health."

Looks like his point went totally right over your head! Krishnamurti came from a very poor Indian family at a time when much of India was subject to extreme colonial deprivation under the umbrella of British colonial rule. So, he was one of many who for a variety of reasons was put up for adoption, and in his case as fate would happen, he was adopted by a late 19th century spiritualist/and charlatan who named herself "Madam Blavatsky" .... no doubt to sound eastern and mysterious and better able to relieve gullible middle and upper class women of excess money doing spiritual readings and seances etc..

Anyway, Blavatsky struck paydirt with the young boy she renamed Krishnamurti, because of his intelligence, calm and inquisitive nature and ability to learn fast and communicate with people. BUT Krishnamurti had no desire to get rich by conning others by making false claims, so as he grew older, he broke with the Theosophical Movement of Madam Blavatsky and decided to really study and learn psychology and philosophy. And he had no desire to get rich from teaching or writing books. He remained in the service of helping others until he died at 90 years of age.

It was no doubt because of his experiences with the early 'self-help' movements that led him to want to do more than help people individually to conquer their neuroses and related illnesses and troubles. He was never impressed by wealth or material accumulation, or new invention, which during his youth, was a time of extreme humanistic hubris, because of all of the new inventions that were being rapidly developed and 'modernizing' the world.

He was not seeing all of this new modernity as doing much to actually improve people's lives, and almost 100 years later in our time of dot.com hype and little more, his message is one that needs to be underlined, not cast away by the super-rich tech bosses and their idiot slavish devotees today, who think some new invention will solve all of our problems!

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5 hours ago, Nefarious Banana said:

You live in a wood house?  Use toilet paper?  Eat any crops grown on that cleared land?

What color is the sky in 'your world' ?

You're late!  It's the everyone-who has any wood products is the same as a clear-cutter argument. Even if most of us would rather pay more and go sparingly than be deluged with the cheapest crap available. 

It's a simple distinction between taking what we need from nature and indiscriminate exploitation of forests and natural wetlands. Which we are getting an overdose of here in Ontario, as if Libs aren't bad enough, our fat, gluttonous Conservative Premier and his advisers have keyed in on "development" as the only means to even make a theoretical case that Ontario will be able to pay back its ever-growing deficit spending --- so give every real estate and commercial developer a blank cheque to build whatever they want wherever they want to, and assume Mother Nature will somehow fix this mess (without finding new ways to kill us all).

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A human society that can peacefully and intelligently control its needs and development has never happened in the millions of years of the species history. That begs for the question, is it even possible?

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2 hours ago, Right To Left said:

Looks like his point went totally right over your head! Krishnamurti came from a very poor Indian family at a time when much of India was subject to extreme colonial deprivation under the umbrella of British colonial rule. So, he was one of many who for a variety of reasons was put up for adoption, and in his case as fate would happen, he was adopted by a late 19th century spiritualist/and charlatan who named herself "Madam Blavatsky" .... no doubt to sound eastern and mysterious and better able to relieve gullible middle and upper class women of excess money doing spiritual readings and seances etc..

Anyway, Blavatsky struck paydirt with the young boy she renamed Krishnamurti, because of his intelligence, calm and inquisitive nature and ability to learn fast and communicate with people. BUT Krishnamurti had no desire to get rich by conning others by making false claims, so as he grew older, he broke with the Theosophical Movement of Madam Blavatsky and decided to really study and learn psychology and philosophy. And he had no desire to get rich from teaching or writing books. He remained in the service of helping others until he died at 90 years of age.

It was no doubt because of his experiences with the early 'self-help' movements that led him to want to do more than help people individually to conquer their neuroses and related illnesses and troubles. He was never impressed by wealth or material accumulation, or new invention, which during his youth, was a time of extreme humanistic hubris, because of all of the new inventions that were being rapidly developed and 'modernizing' the world.

He was not seeing all of this new modernity as doing much to actually improve people's lives, and almost 100 years later in our time of dot.com hype and little more, his message is one that needs to be underlined, not cast away by the super-rich tech bosses and their idiot slavish devotees today, who think some new invention will solve all of our problems!

We don't need a whole stupid history. I didn't read it. Just a link is fine. I have read his banal musings, years and years ago. Nothing like some post-hindu abject nihilism to brighten your day. If only we could be as enlightened as he...

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4 hours ago, Right To Left said:

You're late!  It's the everyone-who has any wood products is the same as a clear-cutter argument. Even if most of us would rather pay more and go sparingly than be deluged with the cheapest crap available. 

It's a simple distinction between taking what we need from nature and indiscriminate exploitation of forests and natural wetlands. Which we are getting an overdose of here in Ontario, as if Libs aren't bad enough, our fat, gluttonous Conservative Premier and his advisers have keyed in on "development" as the only means to even make a theoretical case that Ontario will be able to pay back its ever-growing deficit spending --- so give every real estate and commercial developer a blank cheque to build whatever they want wherever they want to, and assume Mother Nature will somehow fix this mess (without finding new ways to kill us all).

Yeah, I figured you were from Ontario.  Your forest industry is a joke.  Hopefully you can grasp  the fact that forests are a renew-able resource. That's what we do in BC. Supply the 'better than thou'  housing industry in places like yours.  

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34 minutes ago, myata said:

A human society that can peacefully and intelligently its needs and development has never happened in the millions of years of the species history. That begs for the question, is it even possible?

It may not be and perhaps our civilization is overdue for collapse. Expect more shortages of toilet paper and popcorn.

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5 hours ago, Right To Left said:

You're late!  It's the everyone-who has any wood products is the same as a clear-cutter argument. Even if most of us would rather pay more and go sparingly than be deluged with the cheapest crap available. 

It's a simple distinction between taking what we need from nature and indiscriminate exploitation of forests and natural wetlands. Which we are getting an overdose of here in Ontario, as if Libs aren't bad enough, our fat, gluttonous Conservative Premier and his advisers have keyed in on "development" as the only means to even make a theoretical case that Ontario will be able to pay back its ever-growing deficit spending --- so give every real estate and commercial developer a blank cheque to build whatever they want wherever they want to, and assume Mother Nature will somehow fix this mess (without finding new ways to kill us all).

Didn't see where no Liberal premier or PM did much different. And don't try and tell me that the commies will suddenly start to care about the environment. They don't even have decent safety standards.

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15 hours ago, Michael Hardner said:

People didn't even care about this until recently.

Exactly. Didn't and don't because it's not in our nature. Not who we are. Tell someone they shouldn't pile their money (aka attention, time, and resources) on a new version of phone that's coming out every 6 month. Tell to stay with 3 bedrooms rather than ten. No, just isn't who we are, forget it.

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17 hours ago, myata said:

A human society that can peacefully and intelligently control its needs and development has never happened in the millions of years of the species history. That begs for the question, is it even possible?

Probably not. After breathing and the processing of nutrition, killing each other is the most natural thing we do.  We don't even need a reason.

 

 

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3 hours ago, myata said:

1. Exactly. Didn't and don't because it's not in our nature. Not who we are.
2. Tell someone they shouldn't pile their money (aka attention, time, and resources) on a new version of phone that's coming out every 6 month.
3. Tell to stay with 3 bedrooms rather than ten. No, just isn't who we are, forget it.

1. I don't accept that.  Any social change in history could have been argued against 1 second before it happened with that reasoning.   Especially the first laws enacted in Sumerian city states.
2. That's not an especially difficult problem.
3. You have a very small imagination.
 

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18 hours ago, Nefarious Banana said:

Yeah, I figured you were from Ontario.  Your forest industry is a joke.  Hopefully you can grasp  the fact that forests are a renew-able resource. That's what we do in BC. Supply the 'better than thou'  housing industry in places like yours.  

They are not very "renewable" if they are over-exploited and poorly managed. 

And you rightwing knobs need to consider that forest management has to properly take into account the fact that the overall climate is warming along with rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Add in more and more people moving in to rural forested areas where they have greater impact on wildlife...whether they are hunters or not. That's what has happened in much of Ontario. Until 40 or 50 years ago, there weren't enough people living in wilderness areas to have an impact. And from the 80's on, attempts to stop the urban spread are resisted by money -- BIG MONEY. So, if you worship Capitalism, this is your god at work!

The net result means a drying out of most forests from longer droughts, and more and more pine beetles moving north as winters become shorter and warmer....eating trees from the inside out. By the time foresters notice a pine beetle infestation, trees are already dead inside and just waiting to fall over....unless a forest fire makes a mad rush through all the dead, dried out timber and a lot of people who thought it would be fun to live in the woods end up running for their lives back to the nearest city!

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17 hours ago, OftenWrong said:

Didn't see where no Liberal premier or PM did much different. And don't try and tell me that the commies will suddenly start to care about the environment. They don't even have decent safety standards.

The "commies" do a far better job of managing the environment than for-profit capitalists do, everywhere you look!

But first, what kind of communism or socialism or liberalism are we talking about here? I consider the Liberals to be an opportunistic political party with no foundation core values, aside from hot air and claptrap about liberal values, democracy etc..

So, what exactly qualifies as commie today? Cause the poorest, most marginalized and persecuted socialist nations are doing a much better job handling environment and are way ahead of rich capitalist-dominated nations when it comes to dealing with and managing pandemics! 

I believe the main reason why there are so many crackpot rightwing conspiracies regarding Covid-19 and its increasing number of contagious and more lethal variants, is because capitalism and individualist values in general are completely unable to deal with the crisis.

So, we end up with every idiot who thinks they have a god-given right to do whatever the fuck they want, when they want, protesting and eventually rioting (if we follow Europe's examples) because there are too many rightwing clowns who've been taught that their own selfish individual desires and wants, should take precedence over the welfare of the community. 

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3 hours ago, Right To Left said:

They are not very "renewable" if they are over-exploited and poorly managed. 

And you rightwing knobs need to consider that forest management has to properly take into account the fact that the overall climate is warming along with rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Add in more and more people moving in to rural forested areas where they have greater impact on wildlife...whether they are hunters or not. That's what has happened in much of Ontario. Until 40 or 50 years ago, there weren't enough people living in wilderness areas to have an impact. And from the 80's on, attempts to stop the urban spread are resisted by money -- BIG MONEY. So, if you worship Capitalism, this is your god at work!

The net result means a drying out of most forests from longer droughts, and more and more pine beetles moving north as winters become shorter and warmer....eating trees from the inside out. By the time foresters notice a pine beetle infestation, trees are already dead inside and just waiting to fall over....unless a forest fire makes a mad rush through all the dead, dried out timber and a lot of people who thought it would be fun to live in the woods end up running for their lives back to the nearest city!

 

You stick to your 'Ontario Forestry Truths' and I'll refer to my 4+ decades of hands on BC Forestry Facts.

You sound like you're repeating something from a pamphlet . . . 

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3 hours ago, Michael Hardner said:

Above telling people they can't have too many bedrooms ?  I agree that it would go exponentially beyond that.

We needn't to go in circles here. If the number of bedrooms is limited only by the imagination and size of the purse then so is volume of garbage, gases and emissions, depletion of limited resources, destruction of forests and habitats, pollution, urban sprawl, contamination of water with microplastics and other stuff, with the logical destination in the package. All because there's no logical connection between unlimited consumption and inability of a human society to exist in a sustainable balance with the environment.

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4 hours ago, Michael Hardner said:

Above telling people they can't have too many bedrooms ?  I agree that it would go exponentially beyond that.

Now you're intriguing me, hands down. You were so enthusiastic about sustainable society a minute back so do you believe that it would possible to even imagine it without some way of limiting individual consumption (note i didn't say enforcement it could be voluntary for example)? Please, please tell us all about it, would it be one of the standard solutions: it's someone else's business or: the government will figure it out?

Or maybe Canada's favorite: let's have a panel discussion about sustainability and climate solutions driving in our trucks to our zillion-bedroom mansions!

And yeah, if that wasn't enough there's population control too. Infinite expansion consumes infinite resources not me only basic math.

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6 minutes ago, myata said:

Now you're intriguing me, hands down. You were so enthusiastic about sustainable society a minute back so do you believe that it would possible to even imagine it without some way of limiting individual consumption (note i didn't say enforcement it could be voluntary for example)? Please, please tell us all about it, would it be one of the standard solutions: it's someone else's business or: the government will figure it out, or are there other options?

 I'm sure there are lots of ways to do it.  My point is that it's possible and imaginable, not impossible.  Like I said, every social change in history had never been done, 1 second before it was.

"What ?  Are you trying to tell me Enmebaragesi of Kish says we can't MURDER PEOPLE WHO PISS US OFF NOW ???" 

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4 hours ago, Michael Hardner said:

Cite ?

I haven't been keeping a list, but if Foreign Policy Magazine has this about leftwing political parties in the US and England, it shouldn't be too hard for anyone to find:

In Pandemic Policy Response, the Left Has a Leg Up

A week before he was replaced by Keir Starmer as leader of the British Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn gave an interview to the BBC. The coronavirus pandemic has discredited a decade of Conservative Party-imposed austerity, Corbyn claimed, and vindicated the case for the kind of expansive public spending he had called for during the 2019 U.K. general election. In an article for the Guardian published on May 2, less than a month after suspending his campaign for the presidency, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, writing with U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal,  echoed Corbyn’s sentiments.

Corbyn’s crushing defeat at the hands of Prime Minister Boris Johnson in the general election on Dec. 12, and Sanders’ subsequent inability to consolidate control of the U.S. Democratic Party primary race, might have marked the end of the democratic socialist movements that have emerged in Britain and the United States over the past five years. Instead, as the coronavirus crisis has deepened, forcing more and more people out of work and onto the benefits system, leftists on both sides of the Atlantic see radical political space opening up in front of them.

But what I was referring to (before my internet crashed earlier today) were stories like this one from Kerala...the poorest state in India...and also the one with the least amount of extreme poverty.....take that Mumbai, and your dotcom billionaires!

From mid-July, within hard hit India, the richest states were seeing the greatest spread and numbers of deaths, while the poorest states, with fewer resources, performed much better handling the pandemic:

 

How a Communist-led government in Kerala responded to the COVID-19 pandemic

Journalists in the mainstream Western media often show surprise even as they report on governments in the Global South navigating the COVID-19 pandemic with relative success compared to the chaos in the U.S. and UK. But the success story that they narrate is typically one of individual leadership or culture, as if individuals and cultures are not embedded in political spaces. This article is about Kerala, a state in the southern part of India that elected the world’s second democratically elected communist government in 1957. Kerala is currently governed by the Left Democratic Front led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

As on July 4, Kerala, a state with a population of 34.8 million people, has reported 5,204 positive cases and 25 deaths. Every death is unfortunate. Yet, Kerala has been relatively successful in constraining the spread of the virus as compared to other states in India and even some of the Western nations. These numbers are especially impressive, as Kerala is one of the most globalized states in India as a tourist destination and because many Keralites work outside the state.1 Of the 5,204 cases, 88 percent of the positive cases are categorized as “Import” — cases identified among people who traveled to Kerala — and only 12 percent of the cases as transmitted through domestic contact.2 This suggests that the state has been successful in putting in place effective protocols to test, trace and isolate affected people. As many experience job losses because of the pandemic, it is expected that more people may return to Kerala, but the government has said that it is prepared.3 What did Kerala do right?

The latest Covid-19 dashboard numbers for India show Kerala with 4,400 deaths, while India overall has suffered more than 161,000 deaths from Covid-19. 

In South America, the largest and richest nation - Brazil, now has more than 310,000 deaths, with smaller neighbors - Peru, Colombia, and Paraguay also have comparatively high death rates - over 4000 in Paraguay, 63,000 Colombia and Peru has 51,000 Covid deaths. And embargoed (including medicine and vaccines) neighbor - Venezuela - 1,555 deaths!  May not be bragging time for Venzuelans, but compare populations with infection, hospitalization rates and deaths from Covid-19, and they look stellar by comparison with their ruthlessly capitalistic neighbors that also feature much higher income and wealth inequality levels. https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

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On 3/26/2021 at 6:23 PM, OftenWrong said:

We don't need a whole stupid history. I didn't read it. Just a link is fine. I have read his banal musings, years and years ago. Nothing like some post-hindu abject nihilism to brighten your day. If only we could be as enlightened as he...

To each his own! 

I don't want to hear happy talk that's all bullshit. Krishnamurti was honest and ultimately a realist. And that seems to shock and offend a lot of people who can't handle it.

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12 hours ago, Michael Hardner said:

 I'm sure there are lots of ways to do it. 

... and keep our trucks and mansions (and cottages, boats, snowmobiles and so on)? OK. Thanks for inspiring and heartwarming optimism. I'll wait till somebody shows it though. And why not begin about now?

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7 hours ago, Right To Left said:

To each his own! 

I don't want to hear happy talk that's all bullshit. Krishnamurti was honest and ultimately a realist. And that seems to shock and offend a lot of people who can't handle it.

"honest", "realist", that's just your subjective opinion and world view. Nobody else gives a heck.

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