You're making good arguments. I really can't offer anything evidence based other than Bill Gates or Gandhi who voluntarily worked to solve problems rather than begging a govt to control them. I'd totally put money in a hat to drop MREs. That's a noble cause. I'd also drop money in a hat to invest in famine stricken land, to plant climate appropriate crops. Then sell it back to them to pay off the investment. If I lose money on that investment, tough shit.

If I could I'd invest in a hydroponic infrastructure for California's agriculture to solve our drought problem once and for all. I'd also be willing to work for it. As long as I'd be able to buy the investment back.

But, ultimately all of my arguments are about things that don't exist. So you would be correct to call bullshit. I still don't care. I think we can do better without waiting for permission.

Both Bill Gates and Gandhi have had a bit of hero worship applied to them. Sure, they worked to solve problems, but asking the government to spend the money we give them is -also- working to solve problems. The state is a tool (our tool, in fact...supposedly). It ought to be able to do some work...and I don't see why the request that it do so be characterized as "begging", or fundamentally different from what you think Bill Gates or Gandhi did.

Quote:If I could I'd invest in a hydroponic infrastructure for California's agriculture to solve our drought problem once and for all. I'd also be willing to work for it. As long as I'd be able to buy the investment back.

Now that's right up my alley. In fact, it's what I do (or used to do). I've handed over two 20 acre vertical hydro setups on the state dime thusfar (Florida). The next one will be mine (in Kentucky). I have alot of kids...I want to give them something. Expensive startup though, like most conservation tech. Since you're tacitly assuming the full environmental cost of your operation (rather than shuffling it off on the state ala the standard model) you can't really expect a similar ROI...and because food is artificially devalued (so that everyone can eat..ostensibly) the margins are already slim. I do aight though. It'll be years until I'm up and running the way I'd like to be. Right now I'm doing no till (I still collect data for various projects). It's a bear, I much prefer hydro, not as much bending over or waging hellish war on the ground beneath my feet...lol. Mostly I'm just establishing fruit in prep. Just bought this place.

Started out as a way to continue work on a research grant regarding reclaimed water use in strawberry production - our berry boys fell through mid project (tons of the states money wasted right there) and we didn't have a "lab" to play with......so we built one, then..because the community was so generous, we built another. You know the trick was actually the business model. We ended up with a CSA in both cases. One certified organic, one "merely" sustainable. Damndest thing....the local farmers didn't like it, said we were a government subsidized entity and that they couldn't compete with us. Got shut down. I always get a giggle out of that, because the people complaining owned farms as large as cities and turned millions to our tens of dollars. Real David and Goliath story there, huh? It was clearly a case of government run business trampling on the private business owner (sigh). You know what pissed them off? We cut into their roadside trash sales, I shit-you-not. Whatever fell off the trucks they'd sell at stands, and people stopped going to their stands because our produce was of much...much higher quality - and if you asked really nice, we'd just give it to you for free anyway. We all loved what we did. If we hadn't done that - they wouldn't even have noticed that we were there, right in the middle of their farms (so maybe we should have thrown it all away.... or kept feeding it to their cows on the fenceline like we did when we started - weren't any complaints then, that's for damned sure. Bet that beef fetched a high price). Some of it was politics as well, our main guy, the farm manager proper was part of the town gentry (as were the other farmers) and they had -history-. Some of it, obviously, was that everyone was feeling the pinch (state included) and the purse strings needed to be drawn up anyway.

I wholeheartedly agree that we don't have to wait for permission to improve things. Bet the state of California would pour money at a decent proposal along those lines....pretty sure they already do. You -could- do it on your own..but take it from me...your wallet will run out long before you ever see a dime....-if- you ever see a dime, that is...and it's a big if. Isn't that the sort pof thing the state should be using our taxes for (even if the local muckity mucks don't like it for whatever batshit reason)?

Aha! I just thought about this since my last post. I think you'd agree. I have found out there is such a thing called crowd-equity and crypto-equity. I think crowd funding has proven itself at this point.
http://cointelegraph.com/news/112077/the...yptoequity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCr4Cwzt6AQ

Internationalist "Socialism" as it was applied does indeed seem contradictory to libertarianism, but in reality, socialism was an idea that was developed as a way to direct and prepare society to libertarianism.
Social-anarchists are some of the oldest "left" revolutionary factions on western socieities, and upon historical divisions, some people like Marx concluded that imposing an utopian libertarianism out of nothing would never work since the capitalistic economy and mentalities is deeply rooted on our societies, and that people would need to be "equalized" in terms of resources, opportunities, social consciousness , and equally educated, so they ellaborated "transitional" means to achieve the desired ends. These transitional means obviously would consist in antagonize capitalistic temptations as well as gradually reduce the need for a central government, and society to be "decentralized" into local true democracies.
The society we live in would certainly need a temporary regime in order to adapt all our production and resources into being socially advantageous instead of capital beneficting, for example, eliminate overproduction and "economic lifespan" of a product, that would certainly reduce the need to waste so many workload and resources that could be redirected into other needs for the society.

I do not think economics needs labels.

You look at evolution and ecosystems and economics isn't that hard to understand.

1. Diversity will happen.
2. Times change so you adjust.
3. Ecosystems survive with balance and collapse when lopsided.

Economies should have wealth, just not extraction. Economies do better when more people are stable.

(September 15, 2014 at 5:18 pm)stonedape Wrote:

(September 15, 2014 at 9:54 am)TaraJo Wrote: I believe you mean one of two things

1) You prefer the people to govern directly instead of electing representatives to govern for them

or

2) The government is so out of control that the people no longer control it

I'll take one on the local level and two on the global level.

This is generally called tribalism; and, yes, it's worse in many ways to the society we have now.

(September 17, 2014 at 8:45 am)TaraJo Wrote:

(September 15, 2014 at 5:18 pm)stonedape Wrote: I'll take one on the local level and two on the global level.

This is generally called tribalism; and, yes, it's worse in many ways to the society we have now.

Carol Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" speech is the focus humans should have if we want to extend our species ride.

Direct democracy is not in anyway a good idea, just saying - Democracy is already full of flaws with a representative system, most people are too ignorant to directly decide what's good or bad, are easily influenced by emotions and are not scientifically educated enough for it. Not even semi-direct democracy...

If there were 2 referendums, one asking "Do you wish for MORE public health services?" and another saying 'Do you wish higher taxes?", people would probably vote Yes and No respectively, which is incoherent by nature since public healthcare needs to be funded.

I have met many people in my life, older, younger, middle aged, and most possess basic or good skills for their lives, but I wouldn't trust 90% of them to make public decisions for all of us, even if there was an absolute majority - Majority doesn't equal being right.

Direct democracy also becomes unwieldy the larger the group becomes (even if they -are- competent individuals). If our arrangement of government becomes too bloated to actually perform it's duties then we effectively have no governance. Not that direct democracy is -the only way- to realize this scenario...but's it's one of the most direct routes to that place.

You also have the issue (if you parcel it up into little communities all doing their own thing) of compatibility. If you ever try to take a truckload of tomatos across multiple state lines you might find how quickly this spirals out of hand - and thats in a system designed to facilitate the movement of truckloads of tomatos. You might find yourself committing a crime simply by moving 1 foot in any cardinal direction (when every community is empowered to write their own rules)- which is somewhat disturbing, is it not ?

(September 17, 2014 at 10:26 am)Blackout Wrote: Direct democracy is not in anyway a good idea, just saying - Democracy is already full of flaws with a representative system, most people are too ignorant to directly decide what's good or bad, are easily influenced by emotions and are not scientifically educated enough for it. Not even semi-direct democracy...

If there were 2 referendums, one asking "Do you wish for MORE public health services?" and another saying 'Do you wish higher taxes?", people would probably vote Yes and No respectively, which is incoherent by nature since public healthcare needs to be funded.

I have met many people in my life, older, younger, middle aged, and most possess basic or good skills for their lives, but I wouldn't trust 90% of them to make public decisions for all of us, even if there was an absolute majority - Majority doesn't equal being right.

Direct democracy is the best idea ever, it's just very hard to obtain.
The flaws of democracy most of the time can be adressed, but it's in the interest of the system to perpetuate things as they are, and allienate people on politics and on having more community "sense". The thing is, the ones that "could" do something are the ones that exactly act against it, our political and financial elites.

Obviously, in a direct democracy, people should be well educated and "configurated" into having real sense of community and taking decisions for the best of the community instead of only self-interest, which would require several things including loss of private property and wealth, into becoming community profit, and everything should be regarded with having the prespective of having community as the priority over self interests.

People aren't inherently capitalistic or with lack of community sense, with too much selfishness and individualism, it's the system, greed, shortages and opportunity to do it that are some of the main reasons for why some people become so selfish and corruptible.

That's why some ideologies try to adress a transition into a direct democracy, because we'll for sure need eventually a transition from our capitalistic ways in order to survive and not overpopulate nor waste resources on this little planet.