hunter
hunter's JournalThe exponential growth of an innovative species always ends in some kind of wreck.
This sort of thing has happened often in the history of life on earth. Humans are not anything special.
We could land softly, with a healthy stable sustainable population, without all the flames and drama and messy death, but I'm not sure humans are actually intelligent. Maybe we are some kind of proto-intelligence, but even that seems less and less likely every day now.
An intelligent species, even one with a very dim sputtering spark of intelligence, would not destroy the natural ecosystems it depends on for its own survival.
My dream is to make money and banking obsolete.
I've played around with various ideas here on DU, most recently in Kentuck's "What is Money" post.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023903736
If we must have money, I think the power of huge banks ought to be much reduced.
"New" money out to be created primarily for the benefit of "We the People" and "Old" money needs to be skimmed off the top by taxes before it grows stagnant and corrupt, buying politicians and sucking the life out of the overall economy. Inflation ought to be controlled entirely by taxes, but people who are making a minimum living wage should not be taxed at all.
An oligarchy, as we now have, is comparable to a eutrophic waters.
The eutrophication of the Potomac
River is evident from the bright green
water, caused by a dense bloom of
cyanobacteri
The so-called "science" of economics ought to be based on ecological principals. Unfortunately the economists latched onto the language of Newtonian Physics (Isaac Newton himself was warden of the Royal Mint in his later years) and fucked up the world badly. This civilization will probably not survive the distortions and misallocation of resources that are a direct consequence of these economic ideologies.
To put it simply, Mother Nature doesn't measure anything in dollars or any other currency. Most of what we humans do for "money" is destroying the natural and social environments that support us. That's why this civilization will collapse.
Look, the only way we can sustain modern industrial society without fossil fuels is nuclear power.
There is no choice. You cannot economically power electric steel, aluminum, and copper refineries, or most other modern heavy industry with wind or solar.
You cannot power your electric cars or high speed rail economically with wind or solar.
Most of us do not make enough money to power air conditioning in our homes or big box stores with wind or solar energy. Certainly not our automobiles.
I don't make enough money to buy an electric automobile or the solar panels to power it. I feel happy when I pay off a single medical debt. My credit rating is in the toilet. My credit cards were canceled years ago because I mistakingly brought my wallet to an Emergency Room. (Advice from Hunter: If you ever have to visit the E.R. throw away your wallet first. Aim for the nearest storm drain if you are bleeding or suffering chest pains. You are already in a place beyond money. Here in the U.S.A. the Fates own you once shit happens. And you will quickly learn your "good" insurance sucks.)
I'm not fond of nuclear power so that's why I'm a Luddite. My most excellent means of transportation are walking and sailing. Bicycling and horses are pretty good too, for you more modern sort of folks. I figure if I don't have shoes I'll grow calluses. It was good enough for my ancestors who ALL managed to walk or sail away from trouble and reproduce.
Humans populated the entire planet without fossil fuels. I like to think we could choose much lower energy lifestyles without abandoning the very finest fruits of our technologies. I don't tend to buy things. I pay for an internet connection, I have a trash-canned single core computer running Linux, and here I am.
We could throw away the cars, the airlines, the air conditioned big box stores, the parking lots, all the fossil fuels, our "consumer society" entirely, and keep only the good stuff like medicine, high education, arts, and world wide communication networks. That would be a better world, but I have zero expectations it will happen.
The shit storms will continue.
I get ignored, but I don't get "steamrolled."
The rough-and-tumble of General Discussions is fine with me. No reason to "hide."
I don't think there's any way to save capitalism (whatever the hell that is) or this world economy. Politically the only thing we can do is lay the foundations on which a less energy intensive society can grow as Mother Nature disposes of this current civilization.
Humans are an innovative species that has experienced exponential population growth. It's happened before in the history of earth, and it will happen again. Some sort of stability will be achieved. If we humans can't establish a stability that suits us, Mother Nature will impose one on us, one that probably won't be to our liking with a lot of us suffering horribly and perishing young.
In ten thousand years none of this shit will matter. In a hundred thousand years earth will be as wild as it's ever been. Our "civilization" will be little more than a peculiar layer in the geological record.
I've got a vision of a radical socialist ecologically sound utopia and there's no arguing with that. It will happen or it won't. If it doesn't happen then the human population will collapse, we will revert to something resembling the cultures of our very ancient ancestors, and the world population of humans will be about what it was 20,000 years ago. Or else we will be extinct.
I think Detroit would be the perfect place for a National University.
Tuition would be free, food and housing would be free, and it would accept students from every state and U.S. territory. It would also accept children of undocumented workers who graduate from U.S. public high schools and plan to become U.S. citizens.
Majors and certifications would be somewhat limited to subjects where there is a public need, for example primary care physicians, nurse practitioners, physicians assistants, teachers, other professions now often open to H1-B visa workers, etc., etc.
It would be a place where students from wealthy to impoverished backgrounds, students of all ethnic and cultural backgrounds, could interact with one another and learn how to work together. Since this would be one of the goals of the university, I think it should be a single campus, to prevent geographical segregation.
Upon graduation there would be no obligation but to go out and make the world a better place.
The proper way to control inflation is by taxation.
You pump the money into the bottom of the system, to the "working class," their children, their disabled, their retired, and their unemployable. Then you skim the excess money off the top, from the very wealthy class, before it gets all scummy stagnant and corrupt.
Our very wealthy class is all scummy stagnant and corrupt. They are hoarding money and political power which is why we don't have inflation at the moment, but the people living in poverty are suffocating.
I think a National Post Office Bank is an excellent idea.
People living below the poverty level are crushed by banking fees, if they are able to access banking services at all.
Everyone ought to have the dignity of an ATM card and direct deposit services that don't charge exorbitant fees.
It could even be integrated with food stamp, WIC, and other assistance programs. People could buy groceries, swipe their card, and qualifying items would automatically be charged to the correct accounts, invisible to others in the checkout line.
I'm not too keen on concealed carry either.
"Concealed" is not concealed to anyone with a sharp eye.
I've never understood the appeal of concealed carry. Any "bad guys" always own the element of surprise.
Me? I've been in some rough situations, but never one where me having a gun would have made things better. Even when the bad guys had guns.
Guns only seem useful for groups of law enforcement officers or soldiers who are EXPECTING trouble.
Otherwise they seem to make things worse, leaving awful, sometimes tragic, messes to clean up.
Plenty of people have been shot by their own guns, even cops.
Plenty of cops and soldiers have shot people who did not deserve to be shot.
My crazy grandma could be trusted with a gun at one time. She could bring home dinner. When my grandma started to get really really strange (she was never not-strange) my mom took away her guns, at least the guns she could find. My grandma was a hoarder, a bag-lady with a house she owned and a decent retirement income. Eventually the police and paramedics had to remove her from her home because she was a danger to herself and others. It was quite a scene, she held off the police and paramedics for a few hours, screaming, cussing, throwing things, kicking, hitting, and biting before they got her strapped down tight on the gurney and sedated. Little old lady gone berserker! She might have escaped too, if only she'd had a horse.
A few weeks later my mom was sorting through my grandma's crap and found more guns.
If my grandma had gone for these guns I'm sure she'd have been shot and killed by the police. The police don't like to be shot at. Seems my grandma still had some common sense, even as her life as a fully independent adult was ending. She survived to see me married. My wife got to hear a couple of her stories about dogs and horses she'd known on the family homestead as a teenager, or World War Two sailors. Grandma was a party-country-girl-shipyard-welder during the war who started out with my grandpa running away to California to put shoes on horses for the Irvine Company.
I've got some bloodier more horrible stories, but I've also got some funny stories about fools and their guns who were soon parted.
Does every post about Japan have to be about Fukushima?
I don't get it.
The Hanford Site in Washington or the Nevada Test Site are bigger messes than Fukushima will ever be but I haven't seen comments about those relative to, let's say, the Colorado floods.
This typhoon is causing a lot of suffering and will probably kill people. The tsunami killed thousands.
The Fukushima accident is a big expensive mess, yes, and statistically it will kill a few people eventually, but we'll probably never know exactly who because radioactive toxins are like that. Humans live in a sea of toxins of our own making, both radioactive and non-radioactive.
It seems disrespectful to bring Fukushima up whenever people are suffering much more immediate danger.
I go months without visiting a "Big Box" store.
My car was built in the 'mid eighties and has a salvage title. My computers and cell phone were trash. I don't watch cable, satellite, or broadcast television. My computer's operating system is Linux. The only thing I'm really comfortable buying is simple foods and beer. Maybe new clothing, and books, sometimes. Most everything else I make from cast-offs.
The last thing I ever want to be is a "consumer."
If everyone lived like me this civilization would collapse. It will collapse anyways, so I don't feel too bad about that.
I'd like to see a world-wide communication infrastructure survive, medical knowledge survive (especially modern birth control methods!), a robust education system survive, enough food to support everyone, but much beyond that everything else can rot or be recycled. Throw away the cars and the wars and the airlines and the power grids and the oil pipelines, kick back, have a beer, smoke a joint, tell a story...
Want to see the world? Put on your boots, get on your mountain bike, strap on your electric legs, and just go. Sailing ships leaving ports to far-away places daily.
If we continue on the path we are going, this false "economic productivity," the world our kids' inherit will be a lot more savage than my utopia.
Profile Information
Name: HunterGender: Male
Current location: California
Member since: 2002
Number of posts: 39,113