Rethink market capitalism?

[OftenWrong]

12 hours ago, Michael Hardner said:

My point is that it's possible and imaginable, not impossible. 

Yeah. But only on Disney...

[cannuck]

On 3/24/2021 at 8:23 AM, myata said:

But again, we can't prevent people from trading their commodity can we? And we need to sell oil, metals, minerals, gold etc and so on. Let's not turn this into a global reengineering of the humankind, as in this country even a tiny, minuscule change can be "such a huge can of worms".

But, that is EXACTLY what we have done letting the banksters become involved in the process.   A commodities exchange should be EXACTLY what it was and it's name implies: the marketplace is between a producer or owner of a physical commodity and a buyer.  The way to get the thieving bastards the hell out of being able to set barriers to entry and market manipulation is to simply require that if you want to buy a commodity you MUST both own what you are selling and take physical possession when you are buying.

When banks get involved, the "market" is no longer a response to buyers and sellers bidding to negotiate a deal with THEIR interests in mind, but bankers using huge blocks of OPM (other people's money - pronounced "opium") to take control of product for speculative and manipulative activity of the banks that skim off huge blocks of bux that pass on as an included cost to the ultimate consumer.

There is a HUGE difference between a "market economy" of a capitalistic system based on supply and demand and the "market" activities of speculators within the Casino Capitalistic system based on what the greedy bastards can steal from hapless consumers.

[Michael Hardner]

9 hours ago, Right To Left said:

I haven't been keeping a list, but if Foreign Policy Magazine has this about leftwing political parties in the US and England, 

I was asking for evidence that communist countries are better at managing the environment. When you say communist I don't think any of the democratic ones with a free press survive. The key to having a responsible environment policy is lots of eyes on the problem and communist countries do not have that.

[Michael Hardner]

1 hour ago, myata said:

... 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?

Well, will be able to keep some of that stuff. And anyway, we've now moved beyond saying whether it's even possible or imaginable right?

[myata]

2 hours ago, Michael Hardner said:

Well, will be able to keep some of that stuff. And anyway, we've now moved beyond saying whether it's even possible or imaginable right?

We haven't moved anywhere because nobody has yet shown that it's possible in the real, physical world. A prosperous family very likely has a total environmental footprint of a village somewhere so how do we move and keep it at the same type is not any clearer.

[Michael Hardner]

3 minutes ago, myata said:

1) We haven't moved anywhere
2) ...because nobody has yet shown that it's possible in the real, physical world. A prosperous family very likely has a total environmental footprint of a village somewhere so how do we move and keep it at the same type is not any clearer.

1) Yes, we moved past this statement by you:
"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?"

2) "Prosperous" is a nebulous term that means different things in different contexts.   I submit that we can only guess at what is possible, but it's an exercise in something called futurism - which requires cooperation, patience and open-mindedness.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So I reject the premise of your posts, which seem to me to say that any reduction in prosperity by the definition of "How much stuff you have in 2021" isn't tenable.  The fact that we have initiated a carbon tax says that it's conceivable that the nations of the earth can agree to take some collective action about the environment.  

If you want to think forward, though, you can imagine our political economy as a system where people,within the frameworks of nations, decide how their systems would allocate resources.  When you think of things in that way, and beyond 2021, and look back to how economies have worked since money was invented you can see that there are lots of possibilities.

Here are some big trends to consider

-Global population will start to reduce around the end of this century
-Globalization will not be stopped, however painful it is
-Gasoline-powered automobiles are on their way out
-Communication is increasingly globalized, and political ideas are no longer being programmed/gated by a small number of nationally based corporate sources
-Automation is about to eliminate millions or billions of jobs
-Sustainable energy, including nuclear, is upon us

I had a friend who worked for the government.  I told him about the coming of the 'virtual office' where you could sign on from anywhere, work from anywhere, connect and so on.  His response was "Where would I keep my [paper] files ?"  His imagination was stuck.

The  future is a long way away, but also - it's here .... now.   Anything can be changed, including money itself.  They could decide to make money 100% digital, or control the money supply digitally.  

[cougar]

On 3/26/2021 at 11:05 AM, myata said:

Ok only why is it "capitalist" model? Anything alive in the nature wants to expand and grow till it finds a hard stop.

 

This is what you want to see, the hard stop???   You will see it sooner rather than later which will be a shame for our species as a whole.

Show me a non-capitalist country expanding its population base through immigration.

[cougar]

22 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!

All good observations.  There is nothing sustainable or renewable in removing a 200 year old tree from the forest.  It is gone forever - for you and your kids and the kids of their kids.  If the practice was sustainable you wouldn't need to build new forestry roads to new areas "harvesting" new blocks.  Out west here it is 90% based on old forest removal.

There is no such thing as "forest management".  It is all forest devastation.  I can go on and on about the effects, but I have done it already before.

[Zeitgeist]

A carbon tax is a tax on existence.  I do think we've entered a frightening transition to an anti-human nihilistic cyber/computer-based decision making.  We can't seem to upgrade the algorithms in the machine fast enough to meet our very individual human needs.  Essentially the society is being managed by data feedback systems that only get revamped at election time or as new legislation alters the algorithms.

No intelligent human being who knows history and has worked for a living would be a Marxist, which is why the new Marxists are mostly privileged private school kids who have faced no hardship and are total hypocrites, because they'd never give up their privileges for any political movement. That's why it's so important to look at behaviour rather than rhetoric.  Make sure that the governing systems are set up to encourage good behaviour without subjugating people and unnecessarily limiting their freedom.

If we actually adopted Marxism as a system it would quickly become a fake system where totalitarian oppression is justified using Marxist rhetoric, as has happened in every communist country.  The end of a communist utopia (that runs counter to human nature) is used to justify oppressive means and utopia never comes.

Hang onto the American Dream as Chinese Totalitarian hive mentality tries to destroy it.    As the pandemic ends, fighting climate change will be the new justification for oppressing people.  It's already underway.  

Edited March 28, 2021 by Zeitgeist

[Army Guy]

On 3/26/2021 at 5:12 PM, 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).

Our entire capitalist nation is built around supply and demand, want to stop it then stop wiping your ass with toilet paper or having your home built with wood, As long as there is a demand trees will be cut to fill it, if you were serious or wanted to strengthen your argument your house would be made of concrete and steel, and tech has solve the requirement to wipe with toilet paper. meaning your part of the problem if your one of those that consume wood or it's products. thats one of the problems with the left/ environmentalists  they do a lot of whining  but will not or don't want to change themselves but want everyone else to change.

making you sound a tad bit hypocritical.

Most of the immigration that the left are so keen on contribute to your problem of shortage of homes etc, , where do they for the most part settle in, Ontario one of the few provinces where one can still get a decent job, and with that comes the need to expand not only infra structure, but homes as well, it does mean an increase of GDP does it not, it is after all one of the key requirements of why we need large immigration numbers is it not....increase GDP will allow government s to pay off debt right.  how is this a bad policy.

Edited March 28, 2021 by Army Guy

[blackbird]

13 hours ago, Right To Left said:

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

In the situation of a pandemic, authoritarian states, such as China, may be able to fight the pandemic more easily that western democratic states that have fundamental freedoms.  That is a reasonable argument.  But there are two reasons why authoritarian and Communism must be rejected.  In the long run, after the pandemic, under Communism, there will be no return to freedom for everyone.  Freedom is not respected or permitted in Communist systems.

Secondly, God has given man fundamental freedoms, private property, and the command not to steal for a reason.  The reason is because he created man in his image and not to be slaves to a brutal Communist system.  Sometimes there is a price to pay for freedom because the world is not perfect place.  In a crooked world with thugs and tyrants trying to take over, we must sometimes fight for our freedom.  This is what the new cold war with Russia and China is all about.  It is a struggle between two ideologies, Communism (or Marxism) and western democracy (freedom). 

[Michael Hardner]

23 minutes ago, Zeitgeist said:

1) A carbon tax is a tax on existence.  I do think we've entered a frightening transition to an anti-human nihilistic cyber/computer-based decision making.  We can't seem to upgrade the algorithms in the machine fast enough to meet our very individual human needs.  Essentially the society is being managed by data feedback systems that only get revamped at election time or as new legislation alters the algorithms.

2) No intelligent human being who knows history and has worked for a living would be a Marxist, which is why the new Marxists are mostly privileged private school kids who have faced no hardship and are total hypocrites, because they'd never give up their privileges for any political movement. That's why it's so important to look at behaviour rather than rhetoric.  Make sure that the governing systems are set up to encourage good behaviour without subjugating people and unnecessarily limiting their freedom.

3) If we actually adopted Marxism as a system it would quickly become a fake system where totalitarian oppression is justified using Marxist rhetoric, as has happened in every communist country.  The end of a communist utopia (that runs counter to human nature) is used to justify oppressive means and utopia never comes.

4) Hang onto the American Dream as Chinese Totalitarian hive mentality tries to destroy it.    As the pandemic ends, fighting climate change will be the new justification for oppressing people.  It's already underway.  

1) It sounds like The Matrix !  Really it's just one of two approaches that have been proposed to deal with human-caused climate change - either a tax or trading credits.  I can't tell if you despise the politics of it and accept the necessity, or reject the necessity and accept the politics.

2) Slavoj Zizek debated Jordan Peterson and pretty much wiped out the former's assertion that there were Marxists driving the agenda today.  I know a few young Marxists via Facebook but there aren't enough of them around to make a generalization over as far as I can see.

3) I guess it would depend on how it came about.  Violent revolution doesn't easily subside to peace.

4) China is just doing what they do, making money.  They're not out to 'destroy America'.  Your framing of it as a zero-sum game is the kind of approach that helps the Chinese.  The former administration used that framing to do basically nothing and win the politics without the tough work of real reform and coalition building.

[Zeitgeist]

26 minutes ago, Michael Hardner said:

1) It sounds like The Matrix !  Really it's just one of two approaches that have been proposed to deal with human-caused climate change - either a tax or trading credits.  I can't tell if you despise the politics of it and accept the necessity, or reject the necessity and accept the politics.

2) Slavoj Zizek debated Jordan Peterson and pretty much wiped out the former's assertion that there were Marxists driving the agenda today.  I know a few young Marxists via Facebook but there aren't enough of them around to make a generalization over as far as I can see.

3) I guess it would depend on how it came about.  Violent revolution doesn't easily subside to peace.

4) China is just doing what they do, making money.  They're not out to 'destroy America'.  Your framing of it as a zero-sum game is the kind of approach that helps the Chinese.  The former administration used that framing to do basically nothing and win the politics without the tough work of real reform and coalition building.

I don't do point by point.  I'm a narrative guy.  I'll say that Marxism is unreal because it runs counter to human nature. Radical approaches to fighting climate change are also anti-human because if you feed anti-climate change principles into the systems that run our institutional operations, the answer will be to remove humanity from the planet.  Humanity is at the top of the carbon food chain.  That's why we should be wary of any policy that sets human behaviour as its target.

Some human behaviour can and should be changed through policy.  Some human behaviour cannot be changed or can only be changed at a high cost to people.  It's the second statement that we must remember as the new crusade against carbon footprints embarks, because we may literally destroy many good aspects of our lifestyles and civilizations in the name of a promise that may be impossible to keep or simply not worth the price.  Surely there are moderate advances we can make, but these should be made through the natural forces of open markets that drive efficiencies and technological advances rather that through policy that hurts people.  Government is about people.

With regard to China, we shouldn't be naive.  It's system is more inhuman and inimical to human freedom than ours, and the PRC government is seeking to increase its sphere of influence.  Having said that, Canada needs to take steps that secure her ability to assert her identity and interests, which requires a level of independence and strength beyond what is currently at play.  We've grown too dependent on and susceptible to foreign powers, and not just China.  

Edited March 28, 2021 by Zeitgeist

[cougar]

1 hour ago, Zeitgeist said:

Hang onto the American Dream

And what is the American Dream?  What is it based on? Is it sustainable?

[Michael Hardner]

1 minute ago, Zeitgeist said:

1) I don't do point by point.  I'm a narrative guy.  I'll say that Marxism is unreal because it runs counter to human nature.  

2) Radical approaches to fighting climate change are also anti-human because if you feed anti-climate change principles into the systems that run our institutional operations, the answer will be to remove humanity from the planet.  

3)   Surely there are moderate advances we can make, but these should be made through the natural forces of open markets that drive efficiencies and technological advances rather that through policy that hurts people.  Government is about people.

4) Having said that, Canada needs to take steps that secure her ability to assert her identity and interests, which requires a level of independence and strength beyond what is currently at play.  We've grown too dependent on and susceptible to foreign powers, and not just China.  

1) It's more of a framework for looking at history, and as such it's like a lens that shows some things and obscures others. There's plenty of criticism about it's unreal aspects but some of its criticisms of the pure capitalist model are valid.  

2) ?  Our institutions run for the benefit of people.

3) I think Scheer had some kind of trading system in mind ?

4) Sure but pulling back is going to push Canada to the left, economically.  There will be less reason to invest here and the government will be more involved in the economy.

[Zeitgeist]

7 minutes ago, cougar said:

And what is the American Dream?  What is it based on? Is it sustainable?

It means different things to different people, but in broad strokes it means the ability to use your ability to produce what you can, sell it in the free market, and keep the proceeds and live a life of your own choosing.

While some personal compromises and sacrifices must be made for the greater good of the society, if the fundamental freedoms of self-determination are removed, I'd say that represents the final nail in the coffin of freedom and the species.  Don't let others or the system determine your identity and dictate what you're entitled to.  

Edited March 28, 2021 by Zeitgeist

[Right To Left]

35 minutes ago, blackbird said:

In the situation of a pandemic, authoritarian states, such as China, may be able to fight the pandemic more easily that western democratic states that have fundamental freedoms.  That is a reasonable argument.  But there are two reasons why authoritarian and Communism must be rejected.  In the long run, after the pandemic, under Communism, there will be no return to freedom for everyone.  Freedom is not respected or permitted in Communist systems.

 

Well, I'm glad you're at least doing some thinking on this subject! Societies with a more collective attitude are going to fare better dealing with pandemics than selfish individualists who believe their personal freedoms negate whatever everyone else in the world wants to do.

Sociologists and cultural anthropologists have noted and been analyzing the differences in western and eastern thinking on collectivism vs individualism for years now. Radical individualism is viewed negatively in most of the Far East (regardless of communist or capitalist) in a similar way that westerners have been brainwashed against all forms of socialism...even for extended family members over here! 

In deep history, we were all commies, because that's how small hunter-gatherer societies survived for most of human history until starting about 10,000 years ago. 

But, even after the large river valleys began to drain and become productive farmland along the Nile, Mesopotamia, Indus and Yellow River, as populations grew, that didn't mean they all followed similar cultural patterns -- even on hierarchy. From the earliest digs in Egypt (even before the pyramids were built), what can be discerned about local culture was that they were already patriarchal as soon as permanent settlements were established. Ruling hierarchies with kings (who later became god-kings), priests, craftsmen and women, tenant farmers and enslaved foreigners became the norm. A similar thing happened in the city states of Sumer BUT NOT along the Indus Valley .... for unknown reasons! 

Now, one thing that does cause breakdown besides fights over dwindling food supplies is Pandemics! Early on, most of the people moving in the earliest settlements and cities were disease-free (because most of the communicable diseases we are still afflicted with today come from raising and eating livestock). But as the settlements became crowded, the odds of mutating viruses and bacteria jumping to us from our food sources also increased.

How would people in a settlement respond to newcomers who happened to be sick or got sick soon after, and worse: people already living in the community started showing signs of the same illness? Well, long before a germ theory of disease, they would react the same way a lot of people react today when they associate a disease with foreigners! 

The higher population densities for thousands of years in the Far East, may be why some of the customs seem cold and remote to westerners and other outsiders....bowing towards others when saying hello or meeting for the first time instead of shaking hands...let along hugging and kissing in some parts of the world...that's considered too much in the west! One thing I have noticed for some time already, is that when it's cold season or there's a flu epidemic, people who come from China, Hong Kong, Korea or Japan have typically been the only ones wearing masks. That's what's so weird to me about this pandemic. Everywhere I go now, just about everyone is wearing a mask. And when the most alarmist of the public health officials like Fauci and a couple of experts who are always talking to the CBC up here, say we might have to keep wearing masks for 10 years, that would turn into a permanent cultural shift for us after the pandemic is over...and we're waiting for the next one!

 

 

[Right To Left]

On 3/26/2021 at 5:50 PM, 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?

We were actually living within the limits of our local environments for 200,000 years! Because our 'primitive' ancestors didn't have the luxury of being stupid and blithely disregarding nature as the more recent farming cultures as directed by their sky daddy warrior gods who told them to just go forth and plunder nature. That's why there was a dramatic shift in religious thinking starting in the Middle East and spreading outward to conquer the world. 

Today, the worst evangelists of western supremacism and colonialism aren't monotheists out to spread their cult. For the past 30 years, the apostles of capitalism and environmental exploitation have become "rational" atheists who claim to be acting on principles of reason and evidence. But first they had to bury all the evidence from sociology and anthropological research to promote their new religion of Evolutionary Psychology....which tells us that science, technology and capitalist values are paving the way for a better and brighter future...if you believe any of it!

[Right To Left]

2 hours ago, cougar said:

All good observations.  There is nothing sustainable or renewable in removing a 200 year old tree from the forest.  It is gone forever - for you and your kids and the kids of their kids.  If the practice was sustainable you wouldn't need to build new forestry roads to new areas "harvesting" new blocks.  Out west here it is 90% based on old forest removal.

There is no such thing as "forest management".  It is all forest devastation.  I can go on and on about the effects, but I have done it already before.

Agreed! The only real forest management is backing off and allowing nature time and space to recover.

[blackbird]

1 minute ago, Right To Left said:

We were actually living within the limits of our local environments for 200,000 years! Because our 'primitive' ancestors didn't have the luxury of being stupid and blithely disregarding nature as the more recent farming cultures as directed by their sky daddy warrior gods who told them to just go forth and plunder nature. That's why there was a dramatic shift in religious thinking starting in the Middle East and spreading outward to conquer the world. 

Today, the worst evangelists of western supremacism and colonialism aren't monotheists out to spread their cult. For the past 30 years, the apostles of capitalism and environmental exploitation have become "rational" atheists who claim to be acting on principles of reason and evidence. But first they had to bury all the evidence from sociology and anthropological research to promote their new religion of Evolutionary Psychology....which tells us that science, technology and capitalist values are paving the way for a better and brighter future...if you believe any of it!

You are living in some kind of dream of fantasyland.  Russia and China are united in ruling the world with their Marxism and the west is united in maintaining democracy and freedom and holding onto what influence they have in the rest of the world.  That's the reality.  If you think Marxism is so great, whey don't you try Russia or China instead of trying change people's thinking in the west like some kind of agent?

[Right To Left]

6 hours ago, Michael Hardner said:

I was asking for evidence that communist countries are better at managing the environment. When you say communist I don't think any of the democratic ones with a free press survive. The key to having a responsible environment policy is lots of eyes on the problem and communist countries do not have that.

You didn't read beyond that first paragraph, so I'm not going to bother! Believe whatever the hell you want! It won't matter for long the way things are going now anyway!

[Right To Left]

56 minutes ago, cougar said:

And what is the American Dream?  What is it based on? Is it sustainable?

The insanity breaking out today in America likely has a lot to do with so many Americans getting that subconscious feeling that the dream is over. Back in the 70's when I was getting out of school, along with other boomers, times were bad for getting work..especially good paying jobs, but we all seen it as a temporary problem. I'm not getting that feeling today from anyone, no matter how much hopium they try to spread around!

[Right To Left]

17 minutes ago, blackbird said:

You are living in some kind of dream of fantasyland.  Russia and China are united in ruling the world with their Marxism and the west is united in maintaining democracy and freedom and holding onto what influence they have in the rest of the world.  That's the reality.  If you think Marxism is so great, whey don't you try Russia or China instead of trying change people's thinking in the west like some kind of agent?

I'll assume you're not old enough to recall when Henry Kissinger and other geopolitical advisers were devising a plan to drive a wedge between China and the Soviets over 50 years ago now. At that time, the Soviets were the leaders of the Communist bloc and though Mao was more extreme in rhetoric, the Nixon admin went by Kissinger's plan to curry favour with China to turn against the Soviets.

In 2016, it seemed like Trump's main adviser in the first year - Steve Bannon was trying to hatch a reverse plan: have Trump admin work with Russia in alliance against China. If Putin ever did give it passing consideration, it wouldn't last after Democrats and Maddow on TV every night with the idiotic russiagate conspiracy theories. 

Now with idiot Joe in charge, it's apparent that the braintrust behind him is so arrogant that they think they can make enemies of everyone: Russia, China, Iran, Turkey except for Israel of course!  

Add in that secondary sanctions as they're called, are economic warfare against supposed allies who have trade relations with countries that the US doesn't like, and it's clear that the US leaders think they are 10 times bigger than they actually are! So, good luck with all the patriiotic bullshit!

[Michael Hardner]

23 minutes ago, Right To Left said:

You didn't read beyond that first paragraph, so I'm not going to bother! Believe whatever the hell you want! It won't matter for long the way things are going now anyway!

Every paragraph was about Covid 19

[myata]

7 hours ago, cannuck said:

But, that is EXACTLY what we have done letting the banksters become involved in the process.   A commodities exchange should be EXACTLY what it was and it's name implies: the marketplace is between a producer or owner of a physical commodity and a buyer. 

Ok I was only trying to say that we have this business, public service that is supposed to be ours we are the owners and it should work for us and us only and we cannot do anything, change one tiny bit. So how likely it is to "redo" anything in the real market economy? It is only a distraction from the main theme, real change is no longer possible so let's just chat and rethink, think and rechat.