As someone raised on the incoherent flickerings of American television media, I have to wonder if there's any way you can boil down that rambling spiel of yours to something resembling a point, because otherwise I feel like I just walked into a room and had some pre-corp-bound college grad vomit buzzwords all over me. Said facetiously, of course.

@bibliophile I usually get responses like yours when I say these words to people in person. Something is lost in the writing of it that makes responses like Lilith's a bit more the norm online. Need to work on my phrasing/use of terms, I guess? Or maybe hyper-link to a definition? I just don't know which words [i]need[/i] the hyperlinks. *shrugs* @Lilith The problem with bullet points is that they don't get across the enormity of the problems. I'll try though, with one dash indicating the main point and two dashes indicating a tl;dr that you don't have to read unless you want a clarifying vomit. -Authoritarianism vs. democracy/libertarianism applies to the economic sphere as well as to the political sphere. --I use libertarianism in the sense it was meant everywhere in the world before the advent of American right-libertarianism, which is to say as opposed to authoritarianism. The guy who coined it was an anti-capitalist anarcho-communist, so American "libertarians" are basically a bad joke today, especially in non-Anglo European political science circles where it is still used in the classic sense and right-libertarianism is still usually qualified as "American libertarianism" in European political science. -Capitalism is not democratic economics. --Anarcho-capitalist/American right-libertarian extensions of the free market are an exacerbation of the authoritarian qualities of capitalism and not some magic reversal into democracy and liberty vis a vis the economy as their ideologues claim. -Marxist-Leninist politics are authoritarian, and before Stalin ever came in to power that authoritarianism stomped all over what had originated as economic democracy in the worker owned and operated soviets. --See the Kronstadt soviet in 1921 for a good pre-Stalin example of why Lenin apologists can't say shit about Stalin screwing up a "good thing", and this all not to mention the years between 1917 and 1921 where Lenin ordered the destruction of presses ranging from Russian anarchist, left-libertarian socialist, anarcho-syndicalist and trade unionist presses straight through to [b]Marxist-Leninist presses[/b] that just wanted to hold Lenin to his pre-1917 writings. G.P. Maximov, a Russian revolutionary who lived through the revolution and fled during these shitty times, wrote a book in the 50s from an anarchist perspective on the failures of the post-Revolutionary years that is quite good at covering a lot of the pre-Stalin abuses called [i]The Guillotine at Work: The Leninist Counter-Revolution[/i]. -We are currently living in a world where post-scarcity is possible, but this is not news. --Some have been saying this since before the OPEC crisis in the 70s (although they were, I think rightly, derided at the time because the tech/status of global supply chains at the time and the lack of ubiquitous, reliable instantaneous communication like the internet made this claim dubious), but even the most conservative estimates have placed the latest point at which this became feasible in the late 90s. So we're coming up on a couple decades into a world where artificial scarcity is engineered by industry leaders in industries where no global or national industry leaders are elected by their workers as democratic governments are elected by their citizens (i.e. not a single industry anywhere in the capitalist world, since CEOs, Boards of Directors and Presidents/VPs of even small businesses are rarely anything but top-down authoritarian by default, although some worker owned co-ops are sizable including in the Mondragon region of Spain...although in Mondragon there is still a techno-managerial class, so it's not perfect). -Artificial scarcity is not a "right" or "freedom" or "liberty" for unelected people to enjoy at the expense, literally, of lives. However, capitalism, as an authoritarian top-down economic system, disagrees with that in the same way unelected political figures have disagreed with that. --This has happened throughout history (and continues to happen today) wherever dictators, tyrants, fascists or other authoritarian political regimes have had the "right" or "freedom" or "liberty" to do things such as (to provide a modern example from a few African dictatorships) hold food and medicine from international aid hostage in the urban centres of the country to drain the rural areas of people trying to live subsistence lives to an area where they can charge them more to live and eat than they make working on projects for the state and the companies in good with the state's most powerful people (whether companies internal to that nation or global ones with bases in the countries we all live in that are more than willing to cut costs under "business-friendly" regimes, i.e. friendly to authoritarian economics like capitalism). There is no difference to the people on the oppressed end of oppression whether this is political authoritarianism doing the oppressing or economic authoritarianism: everyone suffers and dies from these conditions the same whatever the cause. Economic democracy would mean not only people in the majority world having control over their economic lives from the bottom-up, it would mean workers in the minority world being the collective co-owners of the places they work...which, largely, would mean no one would plan out in the first place (much less authorize) exploitation of fellow human beings working the same jobs on a different continent to boost the bottom line. These decisions can take place largely because the structures of economies are top-down and authoritarian by the very nature of corporate structures, from the banks and investment firms willing to put money down on ventures of companies like my country (Canada)'s very own Barrick Gold, whose workers rape women in Guatemala in South America and Eritrea in Africa (there is a UN Human Rights Commission report on the latter freely available online, which took place [b]before[/b] money poured in for what went on in Guatemala, which Barrick Gold is trying to hush up by attempting to [b]pay off the rape victims[/b] so this won't see legal action), and Canada's not even the worst when it comes to resource extraction and their impacts on the countries they operate in, so if the unelected leadership of banks and investment firms (not to mention the unelected leadership of mining corporations) can continue to act without consequences so long as their bottom line profit exceeds legal fees, payouts and bribe/hush money...well, it's the Divine Right of Kings all over again, but the thrones are leather chairs at the head of boardroom tables. -We're a global aristocracy, not unlike the national aristocracy that existed prior to the French Revolution in France. --I think I covered it pretty well in the final paragraph of my first post, but if it still seems like a confusing analogy I can expand on it. Like I said, you can just read after the single-dash and if the points seem counter-intuitive or wrong-headed, hopefully the double-dash material (or my original post) explains it a bit? My degree is Political Science, I breathe this stuff better than I breathe the N/O/Ar/CO2 mixture swirling about my face, but sometimes I use examples that people have a hard time connecting with. I can bring it home if people ask specific clarifying questions, but I am primarily focused on oppressions levelled at people [i]outside[/i] the minority world I live in, so my examples aren't always super relevant to people whose focus is a bit closer to where they live (i.e. the places which are able to exist in the conditions they exist in largely due to the aforementioned oppression I focus on).

There's not many people out there that could make a bullet-point list that still extends to over a page, CD, so I'll give you props on that. And while I appreciate the effort, bibs, you don't have to dumb it down for me. I may only be a college drop-out, but I like to think of myself as more lazy than stupid. I mostly made my initial reply to try and get more of a boilerplate statement out of a block of text that I felt would make the eyes of others like myself glaze over just looking at it, and it seems that attempt was less-than-successful. Anyway, my bullet point response to those would be: -Sure. -Yup. -Sounds about right. -Nah, don't think so. -Most definitely. -Eeeeeh, I guess. Unlike everyone else, I'm no Poli-Sci student, so I only have my own limited knowledge (and the resources of the series of tubes that is the Internet) to draw upon. I suppose I should elaborate on my views further but I just got up and I'm far from a morning person, so I'll let the thread stew and snark here and there where appropriate later.

Since this topic heavily involves politics I'm assuming it goes here, though if I'm incorrect in this I'll gladly form it's own topic. I'm curious if anyone else is paying attention to the events in Ukraine, specifically Crimea currently. If anyone is, what are your thoughts, and what news sources are you using? Being in the US myself all of the news sources inherently have a pro-Western viewpoint since they are all Western. If anyone has an English language Russian source I'd be interested in reading it. I'm trying to withhold my own judgement on the matter until I can assemble as full a picture as I can.

consumerdestroyer wrote:

In a world where post-scarcity is possible, people's needs (and I think it's crucial that you said "a product/service that people [b]want[/b]" as opposed to [b]need[/b]) should be provided for free. Money shouldn't be involved. They should be basic human rights. Water, food, shelter, medical aid, etc. There should be no cost attached to them. Manufacturing demand for these things to profit off of other people's [i]survival needs[/i] is immoral, unethical and inhuman. While I also happen to think this applies to energy production and consumption, it becomes tricky there for a variety of reasons.

Provided for free by [i]who?[/i] Who is going to provide their labor free of charge?

Lilith wrote:

I'll believe in a post-scarcity society when I don't have to worry about going hungry or being thrown out on the street because of the fact that I'm now unemployed.

Yeah, my partner and I have just been kicked off of welfare (we've both been unemployed for over half a year, me personally for about one and a half) and we were already having to pick and choose which bill to pay each month on a rotating schedule, calling the other ones and making payment arrangements we know we couldn't make and putting it off until that bill's month rolled around. Can't afford food, so we go to the food bank, which means our nutrition is extremely poor. Our household's collective balls are so close to the bandsaw that I'm fairly sure I can see chunks of my large intestine on the ground. Poverty sucks. That said, poverty and other inequalities are largely artificially enforced to maintain entire industries that would collapse if we went post-scarcity. You can follow the money on why we aren't post-scarcity pretty easily. I'm curious though...did you read the link before reiterating that you don't believe post-scarcity is possible? I don't see it as a mark of disrespect, we all have time constraints (and I know very intimately that unemployed means a lot of frantic action and a lot less free time than people think), but I wonder what point you feel there is in responding with disbelief to something you didn't read.

Killebrew wrote:

I'm curious if anyone else is paying attention to the events in Ukraine, specifically Crimea currently. If anyone is, what are your thoughts, and what news sources are you using? Being in the US myself all of the news sources inherently have a pro-Western viewpoint since they are all Western. If anyone has an English language Russian source I'd be interested in reading it. I'm trying to withhold my own judgement on the matter until I can assemble as full a picture as I can.

Moscow Times http://www.themoscowtimes.com Aljazeera http://www.aljazeera.com The East and Crimean peninsula have stronger Russian support and the Crimean has a majority population of ethnic Russians, since Russia did partition the territory to Ukraine during the Cold War (1950's). The Central, Western and Northern regions are in support of joining the UN and oppose Russian influence. Russia has invaded Georgia under similar pretences and occupied territory. Putin does not care much about empty gestures of economic isolation, it happened when they invaded Georgia then went back to normal. The G8 is threatening to become the G7 again, but without an escalation on the part of Ukraine's allies, then Putin will just do what he wishes.

On that last statement, it is [b]totally[/b] true, I can't tell you how many Marxists I know online are saying that Putin is basically in the right here and opposing EU/US "imperialism" as if Putin wasn't protecting [b]Russia's own[/b] neo-imperialist interests that have fallen apart under popular dissent/protest. This crisis, on both sides of the "EU/US are right!" and "Russia is right!" debate, is giving me a good criteria to unfollow/unfriend peeps on the internet tho, so I guess there's that. But I'm finding there's way more chaff than wheat, and it's sad shit in a digital age where they could go outside of Pravda and CNN to figure out what's going on.

Extreme right-wing elements of the new pro-Euromaidan government in Ukraine hired snipers to attack pro-Euromaidan protesters during the unrest. Out of the two toxic options, Putin is seeming more and more like the Obama to Obama's Romney or McCain, ironically enough. Two shitty neolib/neocon options, one of which supports false flag fascist fucks (Obama's administration) and one of which doesn't (Putin's administration, so far anyway, has been supportive of pro-Russian elements in Crimea and elsewhere in Ukraine which are largely neoconservative/neoliberal democrats). I'd still put my trust in the decent people living throughout Ukraine and Russia, but as far as governments go, at least Russia isn't funding neo-Nazis who hide amongst protesters they fire upon in order to get into power. This whole situation is a horrifying joke that I don't want to hear the punchline to, no matter which way it goes.