The War Against Humanity
Offline We are under attack. Our states are a slave camps. Everything we do only gives more power to our masters, who systematically extinguish every outbreak of justice in the world.
No war ever was so systematic, heartless and invisible, as this war. All criminals, villains and conquerors are ridiculous, compared to those who invented it. Whoever faced it, was corrupted, portrayed as evil or murdered, often in that order. However, the idea of evil we have is childish, we are not really equipped even to imagine an evil that gigantic.
I couldn't watch it all at once. It's a canned fire, it's an explosive stuff, it's a plague load, and it's a bitter pill to swallow. I've had a smaller doses of this before. A small hints from the people I trust, who proved themselves to me before. But I couldn't imagine what it really is about. No-one of them could say the whole truth, but I remember them trying to describe it, with a big understatement. Well, now there is an undiluted version. I hope.
Many gaps in knowledge I had, are gone, many pieces of the puzzle which didn't match before, now fits perfectly together. The world suddenly gives much more sense than before. And so it will to you, as I hope. Now I see what these people were talking about, and I wonder how they could stay so calm and do their work. It's a honor to spread this fire, hoping for a world to burn in indignance, and now I have a bigger lighter.
Watch it and feel terrible. It will help you.
ZEITGEIST ADDENDUM
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
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Offline JillSwift wrote:Wrong, I said that it's a myth that we need large farms.Yadda yadda yadda.You said it was a myth that we don't need large farms. I say that it is evident that we do need large farms. Evident in that we have already outstripped our ability to properly feed the people in the world.
And as usual you don't address that at all, and instead knock over a straw man and start a red herring wave-fest.
I think Luminon is talking about factory farms, which are, indeed, less efficient than many smaller farms. Not that we need more land devoted to farming, which is (I think) what Jill means.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
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Offline They do need to get rid of those factory pig farms. The only way they can even compete in the free market with the family ones is by violatiing the law. Like Luminon said, in normal farms the waste is used for fertilizer, but in the factory ones they usually don't grow crops and the shit part of the equation is way over the top - they have to store it in huge lagoons - stinking up everything for many miles around - ruining the lives of the people living there and harming the environment - I've even heard stories that pilots can smell them thousands of feet it the air. Bush let them get away with it so they expanded while the family farms went under.
Matt Shizzle has been banned from the Rational Response Squad website. This event shall provide an atmosphere more conducive to social growth. - Majority of the mod team
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Offline I think Luminon is talking about factory farms, which are, indeed, less efficient than many smaller farms. Not that we need more land devoted to farming, which is (I think) what Jill means.
We need large crop farms to feed folk a healthy and varied diet with or without factory animal farming. Elimination of meat from everyone's diet will only relax the per-person land cost by an acre or so. Luminon's stance that it's a myth that we need large farms is just a pile of poo any way you slice it.
"Anyone can repress a woman, but you need 'dictated' scriptures to feel you're really right in repressing her. In the same way, homophobes thrive everywhere. But you must feel you've got scripture on your side to come up with the tedious 'Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve' style arguments instead of just recognising that some people are different." - Douglas Murray
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Offline Yus, I am discussing land set aside for crop farming.
We need large crop farms to feed folk a healthy and varied diet with or without factory animal farming. Elimination of meat from everyone's diet will only relax the per-person land cost by an acre or so. Luminon's stance that it's a myth that we need large farms is just a pile of poo any way you slice it.
I don't disagree here. I have an interlaced perspective of the situation which I admit may not be correct.
The inefficiencies and poor use of resources I equate to the inherent difficulty of redistribution. When farmers are forced to work in factories, people starve. When laborers are forced to farm, people die due to lack of housing. Each redistribution of resources is a poor use of resources.
Btw, I don't agree much with the historical labels of a communism, for example. I don't mean that people can be arrested for having long hair and forcefully sheared, or that a land of small farmers should be united into a state granges, and I don't mean a restricted travelling, abroad and even across the regions of the state. Quite opposite.
I just want a maximal good for a maximal number of human beings, and so it's called communism, and judged according to that? Holy Stalin zombie, that's a strange world.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
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Offline JillSwift wrote:Good, so this is what I adressed in the post with permaculture and keyhole gardening, what do you think about it?Yus, I am discussing land set aside for crop farming.
We need large crop farms to feed folk a healthy and varied diet with or without factory animal farming. Elimination of meat from everyone's diet will only relax the per-person land cost by an acre or so. Luminon's stance that it's a myth that we need large farms is just a pile of poo any way you slice it.
"Permaculture" is as yet unproven. "Keyhole" gardening is subsistence farming with a new coat of paint.
"Anyone can repress a woman, but you need 'dictated' scriptures to feel you're really right in repressing her. In the same way, homophobes thrive everywhere. But you must feel you've got scripture on your side to come up with the tedious 'Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve' style arguments instead of just recognising that some people are different." - Douglas Murray
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...But every conundrum, every lock should be given with a key. The other half of the film is it. It shows how to fight this evil and destroy it. It says exactly what I had read and passed further, what wise men and women said for many years. Keep at it, endure what you will see and you will be introduced to the concept of Good at it's physical form.
Then realize, that the first half of the film is a past. The second half is the presence and future. The beautiful future of technology, sharing, justice, freedom and brotherhood I tried to describe to you several times. You didn't believe me, you talked about utopia, and look, here it is. It's not a theory, it's already happening, and I want to ride this wave, be there when the history is being made.
I'm moved now, I'm overwhelmed with feelings...
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
Return your yellow, fruity butt-plug where you took it from, Matt, and watch the film. How's the fallacy of opposing without even getting known with an argument?
"Challenging of one's belief system usually results in insult and apprehension."
Quote from the film
And hereby I challenge your belief system.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
Hey my friend good Matt, so much of what you stand for as in socialism, Luminion does too, and is in this flick. Utopia for me is the dream of a world community in cooperation to eliminating unnecessary suffering and and too creating equality. The overall message I got from this flick was "Eat the Rich" as I often say.
A perfect shared agreed philosophy, nor world is possible, but that's no reason for despair. I've watched this 2 hr flick only once, but I remember getting a good overall feeling from it. Yeah I am a dreamer, me GOD !!!
Ignorant lazy me is curious as to the details that people reject in this flick. Kevin made a stab at it but seemed to be addressing the first Zeitgeist flick and the 911 conspiracy BS.
Please educate me and the kids. Heck , it seems we basically live in conspiracy by innate retarded human design of greed and domination / submission.
Dominance and Submission-Blue Oyster Cult
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiF8uSulVc0
BOC tune by Metallica, song "Astronomy"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_Xl4oQkNAQ&feature=related
..."and then came me" .... you, conspiracy ....
Atheism Books.
Are we here aware, that this is Zeitgeist 2, much better than 1 was? It's very different film, much better prepared and verified. It also contains real-life elements, like a testimony of one of economic assasins, or the Venus Project.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
The first one was verified?
Organised religion is the ultimate form of blasphemy.
Censored and blacked out for internet access in ANZ!
AU: http://nocleanfeed.com/ | NZ: http://nzblackout.org/
NO thingy , it was not verified, just a rant, ideas, as you know.
Come on you educated honest historians ... get to the nit picking of this new flick ... we dummies want to know the real deal .... Umm, and why isn't this suff on my TV ????
Atheism Books.
Within the film is also an answer, why it isn't on TV. Absolutely every society so far was designed to maintain a status quo, and to fight all, I repeat, all changes, just because they are a changes, and they are new. In our society, any change, no matter how objectively beneficial, must overcome a resistence. The greater change, the greater resistence.
Dear children, sit calmly and hear the fairy tale.
A REPORT OF AN EXTRATERRESTRIAL RESEARCH TEAM ON THE PLANET CALLED EARTH
The dominating life forms on Earth are the societies, who feeds on another life form, the humans. This kind of life form is very primitive, territorial, and agressive, to the point of self-destruction. Sub-species of this kind are called states, corporations and churches. These are life forms superior to humans. Not more intelligent, but having an other advantages. The greatest advantage are an extremely addictive substances, leaking out of the society's bodily cavities. These substances are called money, faith, fame, hate, xenophoby, racism, lie, fear, and most rare of all, the power.
The societies feeds on people, they assimilate their flesh as theirs. The addictive substances are powerful, but the real power is in their scarcity. This is, what keeps the crowds of intoxicated people near the society's jaws, easy to be flocked, herded, and devoured. Some of the addicts becomes obsessively addicted, they will compete, fight, kill, or betray, anything to get more of their drug, to get closer to the drug gland on the society's bloated torso.
Fortunately, there is an increasing amount of people, who became partially immune to the addictive substances. They were literally shocked out of their glamoured daze. They are still vitally dependent, but they know they're addicts, and they know they have a problem, that they all have a problem.
As we observed, as the societies grows bigger, and their crowds grows, they must emanate still more of the addictive substances, to keep the control and satisfy their nutritive demands. But the concentration of the drugs becomes toxic for the people. This toxicity, and violent effects of the poisoning often surpasses an original, euphoric mind control effect of the substance, and makes some individuals to realize this fact. This is the toxic shock. They start to wish to find an alternative, non-toxic nutrition, free of it's most dangerous component, the scarcity.
This is the independent thought syndrome, and it is, what the society fears the most. It leaks out more of substances, which should make it's crowd immune to an infection by independent thought. Similarly, these feromons contains a stimuli to search and destroy the individuals, infected by the syndrome. The societies must also do this to compete with each other. It all works, but it also increases an overall toxicity of the environment, and so the toxic shock becomes more frequent and more people becomes vulnerable to the independent thought syndrome.
The people of independent thought developed their defensive and offensive mechanisms as well. The defensive is mainly a laziness of the society. It can't undergo a radical changes to hunt down the individuals, it's rather immobile and rigid organism. And so the individuals are allowed to survive and communicate, thanks to an invention called the Internet, but who knows for how long. The planetary ecosystem is immensely damaged in the process and may not support a life long enough.
Conclusion:
What we see on this planet, is a typical case of a parasites, unable to evolve themselves, and killing the host in the process. There is present no intelligent life nor civilization, until the parasites occupies all the surface. Their victims, the humans, seems to be very promising, because it is their individual potential what made the parasites so powerful. A diplomatic contact might be made in the future, but their struggle under the society parasites might be their end. We have here some experts on elimination of the global parasites on other planets, and they advise to act very carefully. By no means we can interfere with the societal parasites themselves, specially not with the state, corporation or church officials. Instead, we decided to stimulate the freethought individuals. Neither this is direct. The work must be done by humans themselves, they must want it. If we'd overtake the job, they would learn nothing in the process and they would not become immune against the societal parasites. But when we make all the population immunize itself, they will pass it on their children, and the last, most isolated nests of parasites will be eventually starved out of members.
Where does the parasites come from, as you may wonder? They are actually quite common. They evolve on an animal species, who develops a basic prerequisities for communication and a change of environment, but still have a major disadvantage against the rest of the nature. This is their ecologic niche, and so the societies develops, becomes stronger, devour each other and eventually dominate a whole ecosystem, that's a textbook definition. The society is usually mistaken for a civilization, but it is far from it. Their presence is vital for early survival of potentially intelligent life forms, but they eventually become a threat for them, when the people outgrows them. Overall, it shows how our work is important for getting new members into the Galactic Council. Without our subtle influence, they often wouldn't survive the deparasition phase. This is why we demand a new generation crop circle projectors, and a more brightly glowing force fields around our parade aircrafts, used to impress the humans.
Kind regards,
Orthon
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
Luminon;
You. Are. A. MORON.
'The Venus Project' is, sadly, a pipe-dream. The level of automation Jaques is talking about is not simply distant - it's impossible. Even assuming we were able to somehow make a system of automated excavators and refineries, what the Hell would maintain them?
Answer: people would have to!
There is always going to be a need for labor of some sort, so you always need an incentive to get people to do a friggin' job! Unless/until we're modified the majority of our species to the point where we no longer require active consumption, we're bound to an economy of some fashion.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
Lumion, this has given me much food for thought.
Kevin you are right though, we will always need a form of labor force for the world, but I don't think that its so much of a pipe dream. There are alternatives that could work instead like, have a volunteer workforce which would benefit the entire community, have a sort of 3 hour shift per person per week or whatever, etc. ( not saying any of it would even work but like the Venus project creator said " my system isn't perfect but its better than the one we have now" [I'm paraphrasing]). But maybe it is time to think of new ideas and new ways for the world to function as a whole and not as 192 separate countries working for a better tomorrow for everyone.
The video is descent. Overall i thought it was quite interesting. Its just really far outta the box then what normal slaves of society would like.
The dreamer I am has always entertained the idea that "work" could be much more like "fun", if a world goal of cooperation, building a more pleasurable world with Lot's of shared recreation and security for all, was the larger shared goal ... enthusiastically encouraging more "can do" eager participation. "All camping on space ship earth"
Yeah yeah, free loader slackers would still exist but I think less so, by better balancing personal rewards of an improved use of capitalism competition, within a much needed more socialistic egalitarian system, which would help to eliminating mass destructive frustration, fear and apathy. Understanding relentless greed lust is of our biggest social challenges.
Welfare is no more a product of socialism than capitalism. Bailing out the rich is not socialism. Socialism to me is the disallowing of private monopolies controlling pubic necessities such as housing, food, energy, transportation, banks, the media, health care ....
Ever read or listen to some provocative satirist Bob Black? Here ya go. Trip out.
Essay: "THE ABOLITION OF WORK"
http://www.primitivism.com/abolition.htm
OR Listen: Episode 093 - click the podcast button, not the title.
http://radiofreeliberty.libsyn.com/
Atheism Books.
Nobody talks about bringing the future here and now. The whole half of a film is about the system worse than slavery we have now in the world, and the other half is about a possible future when we abandon it and do a certain basic steps.
We need to abandon the speculative economy. We need to start to share the excessive resources globally. We need to start! Nothing more, nothing less.
We can just as well have even better future than Fresco predicted. His version is a vision, not a fact, but what is a fact, is that the system we have now is killing us and must be brought down. A radical change can only make everyone's situation better, because there is so many things harming our situation in the current system. There is only one direction the change can go in, and the most of us knows that sub-consciously, when we elected Obama, right? If the trillions of dollars wouldn't go on enslaving innocent nations, we could already have a world not so distant from Fresco's vision.
Furthermore, the technologic progress must be counted with. It shows no signs of stopping, and it was proven many times that it always surpasses the wildest imagination. Our current best technologies also aren't used as they should be, we make shitty stuff on purpose to sell it, let it get worn out, and then make some new.
We have enough of knowledge, but a little of will to use it, like a various methods of permaculture (minimizing a work, space and resources, maximizing the outcome) or the new brand of very cheap, non-toxic 90% efficient water-splitting fuel cells, which is currently an amazing way to store a solar energy. That's just a small example. We have more than enough of good technology for the first step.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
..I just fucking give-up.
Yeah, Luminon. You're totally right. The classical economic model where populations of foreign nations are subdued and forced under the whip to build monuments and cities for you, treated as property at best?
Our modern global economy is definately worse than that.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
www.pointbite.com/2008/10/08/zeitgeist-addendum-and-the-venus-project-hoax/
Too lazy to watch yet another communist propaganda flick, so I just googled info on it. Found the above link most informative. Does the guy really have his head so far up his ass that he honestly believes we have such an abundance of resources?
And some grand conspiracy, right? Great dead Charles Fort on a friggin' stick! If resources are so incredibly abundant, whoever is behind this ' conspiracy ' had the foresight to withhold resources even from the animal kingdom. Holy humping herbivores! The conspirators have been around ever since the Paleolithic era! In order to keep the law of supply and demand going, they wiped out most of the predators in the ancient Americas, leaving only the herbivores. This would naturally allow the herbivores to feed and reproduce until they overflowed into the oceans, there being unlimited resources and all. But in order to maintain the illusion of shortage, the ice age plotters then rounded up most of the herbivores and deliberately starved them to death in order to maintain a prehistoric illusion of shortage induced extinction. Mass extinction just so they can enslave you and me thousands of years later.
This is sooooooo evil that you have to imagine the most evil thing imaginable, then multiply it by 666! Oh, no, wait, I got that wrong. Replace the word ' evil ' with the words ' fucking retarded '.
It takes a village to raise an idiot.
Save a tree, eat a vegetarian.
Sometimes " The Majority " only means that all the fools are on the same side.
Well... now that you mention it...
Whats the downside to such an economy? o_O
What Would Kharn Do?
Basically, yeah.
Jaques thinks that we can eliminate economic and judicial systems through autonomy. I'll give him this: some of his ideas would be absolutely terrific if there were about 4-5 billion less people on Earth to make them cost-effective (though many would still require a friggin' judicial system to implement. Putting sonar/radar in cars to drastically minimize collisions is an awesome idea, IMHO - as would be limiting their maximum speed. But how the fuck do you mandate that without a legal system of some form? And once you've mandated something, guess what? Some people are going to break the law. Oops. Crime still unresolved), and his designs look fantastic.
I'd love to live in a version of the city he's modelled, with all of the ease of accessibility and overall efficiency in it's design.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
Any plan or proposal based on theassumption that thre is "an abundance of resources" on the planet can be tossed out right there. That is so demonstrably untrue.
We certainly do need a dramatic change of direction, into sustainability, away from this mindless insistence on the need for continuous growth.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Utopian communists don't break the law because of their inner chewey caramel goodness. Everyone knows it is a fact that there was no crime in the Soviet Union. Really! Give me 5 minutes to edit Wikipedia, then look it up.
It takes a village to raise an idiot.
Save a tree, eat a vegetarian.
Sometimes " The Majority " only means that all the fools are on the same side.
Imagine a totally automated society made up entirely of robots that are all exactly the same. Their software doesn't allow them to break the rules and all work is divided evenly throughout the robot population.
Utopia can only exist when you remove all of the people.
"A proof is a proof. What kind of a proof? It's a proof. A proof is a proof. And when you have a good proof, it's because it's proven." -- former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien
If you're lucky, and you're born in a more privileged part of the world, you go all the life to a job to earn money, and in the evening you go home and watch the news about how some of the less lucky people blew themselves up. Hobos are everywhere, gangs and addicts as well, kids are stupid and not interested in anything, and everything is fucked up somehow. Eventually, the mess on the one side of the world will get to your side of the world, in form of refugees and dirty nukes. Nobody's really happy, just a few of rich fucktards everyone works for.
The crime of too fast driving may practically disappear, when people won't have to compete all the time, in cars to show who's got the bigger balls. You can expect a different mentality, without affinity to the most of crimes as we know them. For example, there will be hardly anybody who remembers a serious hunger, so people will usually take only what they need, (at a distribution centre) not more, why? But an average homeless man would take everything as a supply, like a hamster. Sometimes it's not even a rational choice.
We can start change the mood in the world in a right direction, but it won't be immediately, just as we don't have yet a cities like Jacques designed. It's important to begin, because every taken step obliges us to do the next.
The fridges in the rest of the world are very different. They're at least a half smaller and has about a quarter of that content, if we're lucky. And we actually have to live out of it, while an average American often decides to go to a restaurant instead. So we stand in front of the fridge, and think to recombine some of the ordinary and scarce stuff there into something edible for a whole family.
When you compare the life style in rich and poor countries, you'll see that the rich countries consumes much more than they naturally should. The excessive resources aren't free, they're either wasted on eating too much or throwing an almost uneaten food away, or they rot in storages to keep the market prices high. An extreme amounts of food are simply wasted by feeding them to animals, of which then hamburgers are made afterwards, and the conversion ratio is like a tons of grain per a few tenths of kilograms of meat, and a tons of dung, which is thrown into a river. Believe it or not, we developed ourselves to waste the food, just to not let anyone else have it.
The abundance doesn't mean "a lot of stuff". It means available as much as you need, and taking only what you need. There can never be such an abundance when we waste so much of everything, and so Jacques gives a lot of attention to recycling and a sophisticated usage.
Of course there was a tough regime which naturally restricted a lot of crimes, like there weren't drugs like heroine or cocaine, and a financial and property frauds were much smaller than they are in non-communistic times. But this is outweighed by a political and police oppression.
What I mean is a society, where you can be whatever you like to be, to be good at whatever you want, and thus there will be enormous diversity of people. Of course it won't be entirely like that, there must be a certain order even in a freedom, but overall, the degree of freedom and leisure will be in majority, unlike today.
Even in an "utopian" society, nobody can guarantee there will be happy people. What we can guarantee is, that it will be entirely their choice how they want to feel, because the society won't limit or condition them. A lack of food or goods is a limitation, just as a great surplus of them. A need to work all the day to survive is a conditioning. I did some jobs which a machine would do much faster and better than a person, but nobody seems to care, this is why we have a mindfucks like a "loyalty to company".
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
Stop global whinning. If life is not handed to you on a silver platter, just whine about the grand conspiracy to fuck you over.
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
The only way how to stop whining is to change the world. We must convert the whiners
(oh, the conspirating fat men in suits are so powerful, a 6 billions of people can never defeat them!)
into the doers.
(hey you government scum, do what we're saying or a few millions of us will camp in front of White House! )
If people would just say their opinion loudly, it would change the world. Just expressing of a will, nothing demanding. Everyone's counting on herding a speechless, passive masses without an opinion. Is that what you mean, as for stopping the whining???
Even worse than the whining would be a silence, then all hope would be gone, we'd be too stupid even to recognize that something is wrong.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
I recommend you all to read the 12 myths about poverty and hunger.
That article seems like a big non sequitur, putting a rather small obstacles as a real problems. It's full of exaggeration and misunderstanding. I'll try to refute the points, as for one in each paragraph.
1) Nobody is talking about an abundance of resources like having them a lot out of nowhere, the abundance is about distributing them rightfully and eliminating an irrelevant and dangerous areas of society, where these resources gets wasted in extreme amounts. For example, an army or commercialism. How much people could you feed for a price of not producing one Coca Cola can? Nobody really counted if we have abundant resources if we save them in these areas.
But the most important is to distribute what we have in excess, as soon as possible. This is for the first paragraph.
The second paragraph is a misunderstanding of a money's psychologic effect. Rich people tends to have much more money than they can spend, and yet they accumulate still more of them. The goods are not a primary goal once they're achieved, because a consumption of an individual is limited, while a number on a banking account isn't. Money are a synonyme for a security, power, and superiority. Rich people doesn't want too much of others to have a plenty of resources, or money, because they do it all for a feeling of superiority, which requires them to be rich and the others to be not so rich. Gathering of money becomes a sense of it's own. It's rare to see someone who gives his all property in favor of charity. (like Bill Gates did, if I remember) Most of them gives something on a charity, but their corporations continues to rip off the people.
This worshipping of money has no rational basis once a survival is satisfied, you can't eat them, and you can't find a good friends with them. Everyone around are a friends, enemies or lovers of your money. A rich person becomes a voluntary slave.
If the rich could really think rationally, they would know that being extremely rich in the world where tenths of millions per year dies of hunger, is a shame and a sign of their worthlessness and dangerousness for the human race.
The third paragraph tries to compare the uncomparable. The society of today with a system proposed by Fresco. This is not possible. We must first start sharing of excessive resources worldwidely, which will transform all our view of other people around us. We ignored them for so long, but not anymore. We will feel much greater solidarity with the people over seas and to one another. The poverty will be alleviated, and military conflicts will have a chance to be resolved by diplomacy, because of the beginning good will. This is the first step we must take, and then the question may be again asked, can we trust ourselves with administration of a system which must bring a benefit to all people? The answer will be yes, we just did it.
Of course, a council for distribution of the resources must consist of delegates of all states and must also be submitted to a public voting, if necessary. But these are just a technical diffculties.
The same is for the fourth article. We can't decide according to a price or a currency, because all the rich, developed countries will in any scenario have more of any currency, and thus the buying power, than the countries which really needs the resources and technology. We need a public, transparent decision by globally accepted authorities. The change of thinking and goals I'm introducing, means also appearing a new authorities and experts, who were previously ignored.
5th article? Technical problems which must be solved as they come. As for the lack of money, it's only a rhetoric questions. We live in a world where 700 billons of dollars can appear overnight and disappear overnight, in a process of the falling banks' nationalization. I mean, USA not going into one more war can pay pretty much everything.
And 6th paragraph is again a misunderstanding of psychology, and applying a society of today on the system of far future.
For a rich person, poor people must be as low as insects, a dull, stupid herd which can be manipulated by a fictive money and unable to have an opinion, yet to cooperate. It's no surprise that the rich does what in their opinion must be done - herding that crowd. The purpose is to kill or control enough of them so there won't be an overpopulation. It's very dehumanized point of view, but I'm afraid it's authentic. Without an organized, global caring for our suffering brethren, we are globally not much more than a bacteria colony, and who can't blame the rich for taking this idea a bit further?
The changes I speak about, mainly the first step of sharing the resources, will give people worldwidely a voice. We have our opinion and our purpose, and that purpose is a maximal good for a maximal amount of our fellow human beings. Take your brother's need as a measure for your action. Then we can face any problem together and nothing in the world can oppose our voice. The goal is not to be equal, it's to eliminate the extreme unequality as soon as possible. Then we can have more goals, but also more possibilities unlocked by that choice. It can be hardly foreseen, because never before we did anything like that. It will be a truly revolutionary act, having a great impact on everyone. There is no old ideology hidden within, it's something new, and this is why it scares everyone so much. Can you imagine that majestic feeling, when you save a life or contribute to a charity? It can really change your life! Well, multiply it 3 000 000 000 times for every person on Earth who needs this help.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
"Whining" is of the root of change. From the whining pilgrims came the USA. From whining came all civil rights. "Turn up global whining" .... get pissed, please, please ....
Can our world community not virtually end starvation and homelessness with our present technology? We also have birth control, so why a population explosion? Who and what is standing in the way of improvement??? Who deserves a mansion, a private yacht and jet airliner ???
Atheism Books.
Luminon, I realize there is a lot of waste and over-consumption in 'developed' countries, but it realiy does not add up to a massive excess of resources.
The numbers just do not stack up.
And it isn't just food and related things.
The known and estimated resources of a number of elements vital to technology are also quite a bit smaller than we would like. Careful recycling would be essential here, but even with that there could be problems for major expansion of technology-based solutions.
We have to roll-back population levels quite a bit to have any hope of a decent future. The growth-based economics has to be replaced with something sane. I presume you wouldn't have a problem with that proposal.
Like others, I see aspects of the vision of the Venus Project quite admirable, but hopelessly utopian and unrealistic, just like an earlier 'visionary' whose grand, idealistic but hopelessly naive ideas were used to justify a whole mindset which has lead to some great evils. I refer to Karl Marx, but it could also encompass the founders of Christianity and Islam.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
When I watch this video I cant help but think of a quote from Atlas Shrugged... something about the difference between blood and money. Bah, would look it up but gotta get back to work!
Good points Bob. The solutions are of course in awareness and discussion, as we are having, and needs more world wide participation. I am a sad impatient optimist. Many ideas always include exaggerations.
Criticism of the Venus Project.
Zeitgeist: Addendum and The Venus Project hoax
http://www.pointbite.com/2008/10/08/zeitgeist-addendum-and-the-venus-project-hoax/
Google: Can world starvation be eliminated?
http://library.thinkquest.org/C001722/hungerwhole.html
Atheism Books.
Luminon,
I read your 12 lies communists tell about hunger and poverty, and decided to take them apart one at a time. Here ya go.
Lie 1: Abundance, not scarcity, best describes the world’s food supply.
The world grain harvest in 2006 produced 1,884 million tons of grain. Compare this with the 700 odd ton yield in 1950. This increase in production is a direct result of increase in population. Were we willing to destroy all native vegetation in Africa, thus causing the extinction of thousands of animal species and countless numbers of vegetable species, the total arable land there would be roughly 300 million hectares.The environmental damage would of course be immeasurable. Compare that paltry 300 million hectares to the 1,467 billion hectares that are currently being used to grow crops and tell me what a brilliant idea it is to convert Africa to croplands.
Moving back to the food problem, we have 1,884,000,000 tons of grain, but of this, some 35% is used for animal feed, and another 3% is used as fuel. This leaves us with 715,820,000 tons of grain for human consumption.
At an average of 1,700 calories per pound, this gives us a total of 3,400,000 calories per ton of grain. at 715,820,000 tons of grain production, this gives us a truly astronomical number of calories from all this grain. 2,433,788,000,000,000 calories.
But this number must be divided amongst the population of the world. The world population clock gives us 6,786,743,939 people as of July 1, 2008. This leaves us with 358609 calories per person.
( 2,433,788,000,000,000 / 6,786,743,939 = 358609.0799 )
But wait, this is the annual number of calories. We still have to divide this by 365 days, leaving the total calorie count of grain at 982 calories per person, per day.
( 358609.0799 / 365 = 982.490 )
Using these same figures, you can also calculate for yourself that 715,820,000 tons of grain equals 0.577 pounds of raw grain per person, per day.
End result: 982 calories versus the lie of 3,500 calories, and 0.5 pounds of raw, unprocessed grain versus the lie of 2.5 pounds.
Nut & legume harvest is harder to find information on, but I discovered that the current average world soybean harvest is around 150 million tons per year, and that the soybean harvest dwarfs all other combined nut & legume harvests. To be generous then, I will use 300,000,000 tons as the combined nut & legume harvest. Nuts and legumes pack far more calories than grain, mostly in oils. A good average is 3,000 calories per pound. From this we get 900,000,000,000 calories, or 0.36 calories per day, per person from their 1.22 ounces of nuts/legumes.
I was unable to find data on world annual fruit harvest estimates. Due to their heavy water content, the average fruit yields very little caloric value, with the average being 55 calories. Due to the fact that most fruits contain inedible portions such as skin or seeds, their usefulness as a food source is marginal and counterproductive on a mass scale. They are better used as a filler food, much like hay for herbivores, than as a form of sustenance.
With the exception of beets, parsnips, yams, potatoes, and red onions, most vegetable calorie content is marginal to negligible. Potatoes are the largest vegetable crop, with 229,763,900 tons harvested in 2007. One pound of baked or boiled potatoes contains 400 calories whereas a pound of parsnips will net you a whole 1,000 calories. Lacking complete data on annual world vegetable harvests, lets assign a figure of 1,000,000,000,000 tons, and give this hypothetical figure a calorie count of 600 per pound. that is 1,200,000,000,000,000,000 calories which is probably a reasonable figure since much of the worlds population gets their nourishment from vegetables. We can meet our calorie needs with vegetables, bringing in 484425 calories a day from this amount. The problem here is that each human on earth would have to eat 3 pounds of vegetables per day in order go gain 1,800 calories. They would have plenty of vegetables, roughly 807 pounds per person per day, but obviously most of that would go to waste.
Fish looks promising, with 340,749,293,926 pounds of fish being caught or raised in fisheries per year. Thats about a half ounce per day I think. Maybe 20 calories a day there.
World raw milk production is 2,282,175,000,000 tons ( 530,738,372,093,023 gallons ) before processing resulting in cheese, butter, and other dairy products. That is roughly 2,500 calories per gallon, and everyone gets 214 gallons a day in Stupidtopia. Drink up, please, drink up.
There are an estimated 1 billion pigs, 1.3 billion cows, 1.8 billion sheep and goats, and 13.5 billion chickens in the world.
Pig average weight = 240 pounds = 0.09688 pounds per person per day.
Bull average weight = 1,500 pounds = 0.787 pounds per person per day
Goat average weight = 140 pounds = 0.101 pounds per person per day
Chicken average weight = 5 pounds = 0.00272 pounds per person per day.
All this assumes that the person is consuming the whole animal, intestines, bone, eyes, and brain. The total can be reduced approximately 25% if we choose to avoid certain portions of the animals.
We have to understand that some foods have a limited shelf life. While we can produce a surplus of milk, it doesn't keep well. Fish spoils rapidly, as do most fruits. Transportation of foodstuff to areas that do not produce it must also be factored in. The foods that we can produce the most of are also the ones that have a poor shelf life, require unreasonable consumption of in order to maintain minimum calorie intake, or both. The calories are there, but in unconsumable form and unreasonable bulk. We are also faced with a dilemma if we attempt to restructure the numbers, say by increasing meat production at the expense of grain. As much of the grain is needed to feed the animals, a decrease in grain production causes animal starvation. To make matters worse, 38% of the population have a food allergy with fish, legumes, and certain fruits being the highest percentages. No matter how you juggle things, someone is going to starve or die of anaphylactic shock with whatever solution you seek. Regardless of communist propaganda, what we have now is fairly close to the best we are going to get. Robbing people that are intelligent enough to be successful is not the answer, as all it accomplishes is to make everyone poor.We saw this in the Soviet Union and we see it in Cuba. The answer is population control and education. We need to be educated enough to manage our personal resources, including finances, and we need to understand that the world simply is not going to support unlimited population growth.
It takes a village to raise an idiot.
Save a tree, eat a vegetarian.
Sometimes " The Majority " only means that all the fools are on the same side.
Desdenova: Firstly, there's no great need to convert an unused land on farming purposes. (Myth 6: We need large farms) Everything I mean is a beginning phase. There is no chance to save everyone from hunger in one sudden action, it's a long process. The most important is to start it, then we can solve the problems as they come, not all in advance. During that process, a marketing priorities will change, so the foods will be used in the most efficient way. The goods available will have to be much simplier, for example, a less of stuff like a 10 kinds of mostly empty, but colourful breakfast cereal boxes. This benefits nobody, but the salesmen, sugar-addicted children and dentists. You counted mainly a basic foods, but we waste maybe much more than what we actually eat, and we eat 4x more than we need for living. Biofuels are an example, but I mean also an exaggerated livestock production, which is inefficient, produces a lot of unused waste, and is one of main source of greenhouse gases on our planet. The 'Myth 4: environment versus more food?' gives some hints on this, for example, the Cuban system.
Global sharing won't feed everyone at first, and it's not the point. I'm starting now to understand it more... It's the psychologic impact and a long-termed benefit we are aiming for, the only one that lasts. It's about focusing the whole human attention and potential on this most important problem ever, from which all other great crises originates. So far, we're only destroying our only home and each other. It's unacceptable to have this murderous unequality on our planet. We can perhaps live a 20 years like that, but not 100 or more. When one population is oversatiated and the other starves, the logical step is in the first place to share the resources, not to decrease the starving population.
And tell me, if the overpopulation is a problem, how do you want to control it? You also mentioned education. Killing the people just to decrease their number is not an option for many reasons, so we won't even discuss it. And the birth control? Nobody really wants it there. The poor people are known to have the most children, simply because they're poor and they need someone to survive and take care of them. There is an opposite process in developed countries, when a population is secured, they don't need children to work for them, and so their number naturally decreases. It's the only moral way how to do it, to feed them, give them housing, education and healthcare, and so they won't need to worry about the future and produce more children to secure themselves.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
To feed one person for one year on a varied diet as north America and Europe eat, sustainably and somewhat secure against crop failures, it is widely accepted that you need about one half a hectare. (One hectare is a tad less than 2 and a half acres - specifically 10,000 meters square.)
6.5 billion people, so 3.25 billion hectares of land. 32,500,000,000,000 square meters.
Texas has a total land area of 420,038.8 square meters. To feed 6.5 billion folks a solid and varied diet, we need 77373804.5 Texas' worth of farmland.
The earth has 148,940,000,000 square meters of land total (not all of it, of course, can be farmed).
Explaining the vastly smaller and simpler diets of a large percentage of the earth's population, and why famine is an ongoing problem. Why, pray tell, is this all a myth?
"Anyone can repress a woman, but you need 'dictated' scriptures to feel you're really right in repressing her. In the same way, homophobes thrive everywhere. But you must feel you've got scripture on your side to come up with the tedious 'Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve' style arguments instead of just recognising that some people are different." - Douglas Murray
Does the movie ever get interesting? I got through about 20 minutes before I couldn't take it any more. I mean, it's the most childish display of economic misunderstanding I've ever sat through, only with the addition of tedious special effects.
How are people who are taking out loans being screwed? How? How is a banking system that has worked the same way for 500 years broken?
Maybe I'm biased, considering I'm a commodity speculator, and I actually understand what's going on. My first reaction to this garbage is "Fine, don't have a credit card or a bank account. Don't take part in any credit system. Never take out a loan. Instantly convert whatever money you make into gold." The rules of this game aren't going to change right away, so it might be better to direct your energies at helping yourself out.
Sure, money's an illusion. Is that not common knowledge?
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
Our current methods of food production are slowly increasing, serving to reduce global hunger each year. This does not seem to be the case because we continue churning out 70 million people every year. So while the percentage of people starving continues to decrease, the number of people starving also increases, giving the illusion of falling behind. But the truth is more complicated that that. Biologists have demonstrated time and again that when a population of animals exceeds the ability of an area to feed it, mass starvation will occur. This is common sense to anyone not wearing the blinders of ideology. Capitalism won't stop it, communism won't stop it, nothing but a massive population decrease will stop it.
If we choose to circumnavigate the local production, as all efforts toward ending world hunger must, we face increased fuel use. This causes not only the price of fuel to rise, but also the price of food, electronics, clothes, and everything else that must be transported. This solves nothing save for destroying an economy. I live in the Arctic circle. No roads connect this village to the outside world and the shallow ocean floor prevents all but the smallest of boats from getting within 7 miles of shore. Due to the cost of transportation, we pay around $6 for a gallon of gas, $5 for a loaf of bread, and $16 for a gallon of orange juice. Fresh produce is impossible to grow and due to spoilage, equally prohibitive in cost. Your plan would cause this inflation on a global scale. In fact it would compound the inflation as fuel would become even more in demand. If you want to destroy the global economy there is no better way to do it, thus ensuring mass starvation on all continents. While you may consider this to be humanitarian, I beg to differ.
While companies do sell high gloss foods, the consumer is the one that buys it. I will ignore the fact that most of these high gloss foods have an extremely high calorie content and focus instead on supply and demand. There are multiple choices of foods that are healthier, cheaper, and simple to prepare available on virtually every supermarket shelf in the world. The consumers usually pick a high gloss product anyhow. They buy what they want in the price range they can afford. They do not buy the most economical, healthy, environmentally friendly, or world saving.
You wish to plead environmentalism, but nobody is pushing for livestock emission alternatives that may help protect the environment. Instead of releasing gases, the methane emissions could be used as a source of energy. I also get the impression of backtracking, as the site you offered mentioned the availability of milk and cheese, two products that vanish if we remove cattle from the food list, decreasing their already flawed global calorie count even further.
Contrary to your Utopian ideals, the logical step is not redistribution of food, but rather examining what is causing starvation in certain areas, and seeing if this can be fixed. Some areas are simply not viable for the population they support. Moving the population to places where the land is arable is a solution, albeit a short term one. Once there, they will continue to reproduce until their population exceeds the level of sustainability in the region, creating another wave of starvation. Yet again, population control is the only logical answer.
You ask my ideas for population control. I have already answered this when I mentioned education. However if you wish an elaboration and alternative, I will gladly deliver. Education is the number one factor in economic stability. Not only does it open the door for better wages, it also allows people to expand their intelligence in ways that let them manage their resources, both monetary and other, in more efficient ways. There is a reason you don't see professors begging on street corners. There is also a reason that the majority of people sitting in the dirt with flies crawling on their faces are illiterate. Education has liberated millions of people from poverty. The lack of education has condemned countless millions more to oppression and starvation. As you have pointed out, the educated affluent population is the group that is having less children. It could be argued that they are doing so, not because they no longer need someone to " survive and take care of them " but because, thanks to their education, they understand the impact of skyrocketing global population, and are taking matters into their own hands. It also eludes me how a herd of dysenteric offspring could possibly take care of anyone. The parents are, through the cruelty of ignorance, condemning those children to a short, hellish life. If you want a grand conspiracy here, look no further than religious missionaries that have taught them that birth control is wrong.
The inhumane solution, though also the easiest, is to let nature fix the problem like it is already doing. A callous person could say " They got themselves into this mess. It isn't my responsibility to get them out. ". This is especially true when the people starving only need to pick up their clay pots and walk 50 miles north to a lush forest filled with an abundance of plants and animals. If they are too stubborn or stupid to do this, I damned sure don't need to waste my time helping them.
Humanitarian efforts, while usually ineffective, are noble. But nobody should ever insist that their vision of nobility be forced upon others. This is dangerously close to trying to force your own version of morality on others. You can't force someone to be kind, generous, sharing, noble, or even ethical. The best you can do is educate as many people as possible, encourage them to do likewise, and hope for the best. Nature will take care of those that don't join in, just like it always has. Just like it is doing today
It takes a village to raise an idiot.
Save a tree, eat a vegetarian.
Sometimes " The Majority " only means that all the fools are on the same side.
JillSwift: So, we can't save everyone from hunger, so we shouldn't even start trying it, huh? Oh, geez.
By the way, we live in states. Every state is known to have a degree of autonomity, and it's also known to take care of it's citizens, to some degree. There should be approximately enough of land and resources on a state's territory to support it's population, and usually it is so, despite of your calculations. Why it isn't always like that? For example, because of civil wars, which prevents any crop to stay on a place. Or a damaged infrastructure. The poor states only needs to get on their feet and they will not only support themselves, but some of them will be also able to provide a help with the plan. We don't need all the food or land in the world at once, we can use the resources gradually, just as the help would be provided.
Before we couldn't do anything with it, it was natural to cut down the forests, slay predators, mine ores and rip off peasants, but these times are over. Now, either we start to care for everyone, or there will always (not really a long time) be a war, famine, ecologic calamity and other crises, until it escalates into a series of catastrophes. It's quite simple. We must reach a political, economic and ecologic stability (which are currently far away) by reaching a social (humanitary) stability.
Technically, we don't need to abolish the money any soon. Money aren't evil, it's a tool which can be used in a good or bad ways. We need to stop the speculation, start being concerned about the purpose of interest, close stock markets, erect a limits against the "free" market, (to protect people) and such a similar things. One of the problems is, as I understand it, that certain institutions can make a practically unlimited money, and they demand a real, limited resources for them as they wish, which is rather bad for the world. When you get a good price for a commodity, let's say a house, or you manage to sell it well, is the house any smaller, in a case of a smaller price, or has it magically grown any more rooms, in case of a higher price? No, the house stays the same. It may come to a situation when you can demand any price, because the price is relative. If the price is too high, you had made an unhappy person of your customer, who then afterwards can become a criminal, alcoholic, or just a violent person. You might even need to pay a lot of money on your security, after doing such a business. And in this way the speculation destroys a human values, as I understand it. Of course, it's much more extreme today.
To be precise, what I mean is achieving at least some stability there, allowing us to do exactly what you say. This work can't be done if the land is thick with guerilla fighters, distrustful civilians, and mine fields. The children won't remember much of the education, if AK-47 sings a few huts away. First, the situation must be alleviated by shipping a lacking resources, food, medicine, metals and other materials. The best way how to get them is to confiscate the excessive resources, which are held away to keep a market prices high. This way it will be very easy for people to accept, we don't have a benefit of these resources anyway, they're just held back to rip us off better.
It is normal in this world to decide to throw away the money for no real benefit. A war, for example, USA can decide to shake a few states on the other side of the world, having no real benefit from this. There is no reason why we can't do a humanitary action like that. To quote a certain dub music track, this is the War machine. Let's try a Peace machine for a change.
By the way, I agree with you, that we can't force anyone to share the resources, or to help others. But all the suffering people in the world calls for help, and about a half of the other population is willing to help. This makes a majority. Everyone wants the better world, and wanted it for millenia, as there always were ideals like Freedom, Brotherhood and Justice, or just a common decency and good will. We already made the decision. Now we are obliged by it and thus we must do something for it. By this something is clarifying and expressing this opinion. The question is not if, but how.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
You said it was a myth that we don't need large farms. I say that it is evident that we do need large farms. Evident in that we have already outstripped our ability to properly feed the people in the world.
And as usual you don't address that at all, and instead knock over a straw man and start a red herring wave-fest.
"Anyone can repress a woman, but you need 'dictated' scriptures to feel you're really right in repressing her. In the same way, homophobes thrive everywhere. But you must feel you've got scripture on your side to come up with the tedious 'Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve' style arguments instead of just recognising that some people are different." - Douglas Murray
Communist lie # 2 : It is too easy to blame nature.
The most common cause of famine is the human population of an area exceeding the productivity of that area. It is caused by ignorance of the need for population control. As ignorance is the natural state, it is safe to attribute this cause of famine to nature. We humans are animals, and when an animal density exceeds the resources for a region, starvation is the result. Nature, ever the culprit here, tells us to reproduce, but only an educated examination of regional conditions allows us to thwart this natural inclination.
Another cause of famine is disease of crops, the Irish potato famine which killed an estimated 14 million being a classic example. Purely natural.
Drought is yet another contributing factor to famine. Mass migrations from Chili in 9,500 BCE has been linked to drought, the deserts of the Horn of Africa, Sudan, and Chad were created by drought conditions. Even the collapse of the Mayan empire is attributed to drought. As we don't control the rain, nature is the only thing to blame.
Diseases that wipe out large human populations also lead to famine. When the Black Death struck Europe, it killed between 25-50 million people, leaving too few people to tend the fields, resulting in famine. Yet again we have nothing but nature to blame.
Human interaction through ignorance also creates famine. The Dust Bowl of America which was largely responsible for exacerbating the Great Depression, was a combination of drought and the destruction of soil saving indigenous plant life. When drought caused crop failure, there was nothing to protect the topsoil from winds. While was have since filled that gap of ignorance in America, drought continues to play its part. Furthermore, other nations have failed to learn from our mistakes and are depleting their topsoil even as we debate. The natural state of ignorance remains.
Finally we come to a gigantic cause of famine, communism. This misguided concept of sharing led to the famines of the Great Leap Forward starving 13,480,000 people to death, North Korea's famine that killed possibly 3 million, the Soviet Russian famine of 1921-1922 that killed 5 million, and the 1930's Holodomar famine of the Soviet Ukraine which killed up to 14 million. The failed concept of universal sharing is seen here to be perhaps the greatest cause of famine and death. Redistribution problems and decreased productivity under communism is as deadly was warfare.
Another communist lie has been exposed here. They would pretend that nature has little to do with it. But the truth does come out, showing how drought, disease, and a biology driven overpopulation are the major causes of famine. In essence, nature kills, period. Ignorance and misguided communist distribution also do their part to starve the worlds masses. Far from being a solution, redistribution of resources kills millions.
Yet again, the real solution is education. Understanding of resource distribution & management, topsoil depletion, nutrition, and the need for population control is our only hope. Education offers us opportunity. Choosing the path of education is the responsibility of local communities, and ultimately the individual. You can lead someone to knowledge, but you can't make them think. Nor is it your duty to do their thinking for them
It takes a village to raise an idiot.
Save a tree, eat a vegetarian.
Sometimes " The Majority " only means that all the fools are on the same side.
Hmm, I don't have a brief for communism, but I would see the food supply problems with communist regimes as more specifically to do with the gross inefficiencies and poor use of resources, poor, dogma-based, decision-making, lack of incentive and farming skill of the workers, etc, involved in the forced collective farming 'reforms', rather than the idea of re-distribution as such.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
I don't disagree here. I have an interlaced perspective of the situation which I admit may not be correct.
The inefficiencies and poor use of resources I equate to the inherent difficulty of redistribution. When farmers are forced to work in factories, people starve. When laborers are forced to farm, people die due to lack of housing. Each redistribution of resources is a poor use of resources.
Dogma based decision making and poor farming skills are covered by the lack of education that I keep pointing to as a major issue. I alluded to the lack of incentive in paragraph 7 in mentioning decreased productivity. When Trofim Lysenko took over the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences, he rejected the " “alien bourgeois foreign biology” which included genetics and heredity, as these were contrary to communist philosophy. Textbooks were revised, removing the heretical genetics, and inserting his own pro-communist theories. This was key in destroying Soviet agriculture, and is part of the ignorance I continue to rant about.
All of these factors I see as being directly related to the concept of redistribution of resources which is a key philosophy of communism. The reasoning stands that social classes dissolve once we remove free ownership of property and allow resources to be distributed evenly. Problems occur when this system inevitably breaks down. Critical thought is abandoned because pointing out the flaws in the system would cause abandonment of the system. People are forced to adhere to dogma in a futile effort to maintain the crumbling support system. Spoilage and logistics are equally subject to this dogma. Education is strangled, with everything save for dogma being weeded out. Even the lack of incentive is ignored.
In attempting to liberate the proletariat, communism actualy created the proletariat by forcing people to redistribute the products of their labor.
It takes a village to raise an idiot.
Save a tree, eat a vegetarian.
Sometimes " The Majority " only means that all the fools are on the same side.
Communist lie #3. There aren't too many people.
The World Population Prospects Database gives us these figures.
1950 world population: 2,535,093,000
1960 world population: 3,031,931,000 ( 496,838,000 growth )
1970 world population: 3,698,676,000 ( 666,745,000 growth )
1980 world population: 4,451,470,000 ( 752,792,000 growth )
1990 world population: 5,294,879,000 ( 843,409,000 growth )
2000 world population: 6,124,123,000 ( 829,244,000 growth )
2005 world population: 6,514,751,000 ( 390,624,000 growth )
The 2005 report is only half a decade. From that we can project a likely figure of 781,248,000 growth by 2010. While birth rates may be slightly down, they are still significantly higher than in 1980. When coupled with people living longer due to better health care, we can project a figure of over 9 billion people by the year 2050.
26% of our total land area is already devoted to agriculture. This at the expense of one fourth of all grasslands and one third of all tropical & temperate forests. Some 40% of the world's agricultural land is seriously degraded. Among the worst affected regions are Central America ( see communist lie regarding Brazil and Bolivia ), where 75% of land is infertile, Africa ( see the communist lie regarding Nigeria and Kerala ), where a fifth of soil is degraded, and Asia ( see the communist lie regarding China ), where 11% is unsuitable for farming. Most of this soil degradation comes from slash and burn farming techniques, salinization, mineral depletion, and soil erosion from farming. This damage is being done in order to provide food for an increasingly large population. The brute force agriculture methods employed by developing countries allowed them a period of growth, but ultimately destroyed or degraded their overall ability to produce food. To point to their early success as evidence of sustainability is to ignore the environmental damage they have caused.
Food is limited. Drinking water is limited. Irrigation water is limited. Topsoil is limited. Oil is limited. Metals are limited. All resources we have to continue to feed, shelter, cloth, and water the world is limited. We must also share these resources with the other creatures on our planet. It is foolish to pretend that we can continue down the path of unchecked population growth. The agriculture has done in only the last 80 years has put considerable strain on our arable soil. Only decreasing the population and maintaining that decreased rate will possibly solve this mess we have gotten ourselves into. Despite the communist lie, there are just too many of us for the resources we have.
sources sited:
http://earthtrends.wri.org/features/view_feature.php?theme=8&fid=34
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/aug/31/climatechange.food
http://www.jstor.org/pss/1310591
It takes a village to raise an idiot.
Save a tree, eat a vegetarian.
Sometimes " The Majority " only means that all the fools are on the same side.
The large farms has a minimal efficiency, compared to a small farms, which has a several times higher one. Ben Creme says that and I can support it, according to my experiences with Permaculture and the similar Russian kin-land cultural movement, founded by the writer Vladimir Megre. There is also an african 'keyhole gardening', founded on very similar principles, I mentioned earlier. Even if a large farms would be more efficient, which I doubt very much, they are unreachable for the poor people, who can start only the [url=http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/appeal-keyhole-gardening-saves-lives-in-worlds-most-eroded-land-702081.html]'keyhole gardening'
As for the big farms, you're probably deceived by a large amount of their production, but this is only linear, compared to their size. The big farms faces a logistic problems which makes a collection and recyclation of a waste too demanding. In the small-scale farming, the waste is a valuable resource, nothing gets lost, nothing gets thrown away, and there is no need for a fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, fungicides and so on, which makes the demands minimal. The plants are also more resistant to pests and diseases, because there is not a monoculture, but a combination of plants supporting and protecting each other. This makes the ratio of yields versus costs very efficient.
As for our ability to feed the people in the world properly, I suspect we never really tried. The problem with small farms is, that they're impossible to be owned and managed by one owner or institution, they're very local and private. They give people an ability to survive independently. Whenever there was an effort to weaken the people, to make them dependent, there was a collectivization of a land into a greater units, for example in Soviet Union, or in USA, where the corporations controls a market with seeds and fertilizers for the farmers. Who owns the food, can dictate a demands.
This is nicely documented by a certain archeologic theory which I had once read. Initially, people were gatherers, not farmers. The farming revolution came, and people says it was because farming is more efficient, so the stronger prevailed, but it isn't. As I had read, the skeletons of early farmers showed much more signs of malnourishment and diseases, than the skeletons of gatherers. The only reason why the farming prevailed, was an ability of the crops to be stored. A stored grain allowed the owner to store a value, and thus to gain a power. This early oligarchy eventually controlled their underlings to wipe out a more egalitarian gatherers.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.