econ101 for lefties

Rod Speed

2009-05-23 18:10:29 UTC

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227081.000-david-attenborough-our-planet-is-overcrowded.html?page=2

"Could it be that the 'West' is addicted to excess."
Well, of course. It's called capitalism. If you have a system
in which the economy must "expand" all the time, you get
constant production of unnecessary items and the attendant
marketting. Of course people will be addicted to excess.

Yes, but *YOU* don't have to follow the sheep.
OTOH I bet you ARE a 'wintel' user/adict/sheep ?

Or just someone with enough of a clue to realise that almost
anything works quite adequately for newsgroup posting.

Another problem is that people in the west believe
they are "free" and have to keep this "freedom".
That is of course merely another marketting tool,

Yes, marketers [like pathogens] will 'attack' us, but we must resist.

Or just ignore them completely.

because most people in the west are only free to
be "consumers" - itself a term that indicates that
the population has been turned into passive infants.

No, how are you ONLY free to be a 'sheep' ?

We need a new economic paradigm, one which involves
producing and supplying only what is really needed.

Mindlessly silly. If everyone operated like that, the real
standard of living would be much worse than it currently is.

Thats close to the current economic situation and has
very real downsides in unemployment and layoffs.

Unfortunately this is normally dismissing without any thought as "socialism",
which is (in many peoples' minds) synonymous with "communism"
which is in term synonymous with Stalinism or totalitarianism.

Yes, americans are mostly that mindlessly simplistic.

Yes, people are simple/sheep-like.
Manipulateable by Marxist and by marketers.

This doesn't have to be the case, but there is a fear of being
socialist which is stopping people from even being social.

True.

Nope. There is lots of 'socialism' in america right now, most
obviously with social security, medicare, medicaid, welfare
etc etc etc and charity before any of those showed up too.

They would rather keep the third world as their slaves, churning out
(often unnecessary) goods and not paying them enough to live on,

Wrong. Learn econ 101 to avoid losing credibility of even your good points.
You're whole argument is discarded because of PeeCee leftist mamtras.

Yours isnt doing any better for different reasons.

and also condemn their own grandchildren
to a life as peasants in a world stripped of its
resources, than give up any of their "freedom".

What's wrong with 'life as peasnts' -- contradictor ?

It aint as good as the most obvious alternative.

BTW your definition of capitalism is wrong.
If I use my own richshaw I'm not 'using capaitalism'.
But if, when I start my carreer, I hire a richshaw, from some
one who's retired and saved enough to own 3 rickshaws,
that the owner and user of the 'means of production'
[the rickshaw] are not the same person.
One of the greatest 'new economic paradigms' of recent
times was Chinese communism, which achieved a lot.

Nothing like as much as the west did tho.

But couldn't absorb the simple knowledge available from
the free-west, that 'smoking is bad for your health'. Mao's
picture usually showed him with a cigarette. Now tens of
millions suffer from the failure to promote that simple knowldge.

And couldnt even manage to work out the basics of infectious disease either.

That had to be imported from the west.

Although this NewsGroup still functions well,

Which of the two ?

there are already many other previously good
NewsGroups which have been crowed-out by
the twittering-idiot-masses. To avoid further
displacement of the NNT-protocol by the
dumbed-down inefficient clik-blogs, we
need to take a stand.

You can stand wherever you like, wont make any difference.