In reply to thomas malloy's message of Sat, 31 Jan 2009 23:25:42 -0600 (CST): Hi, [snip] >>>Capitalism is a mechanism for wealth production. It works quite well, >>>individual incentive, like every time it's been tried. IMHO, what you >>>don't like is private enterprise in the pocket of government, AKA fascism. >>> >>>I think that should be government in the pocket of private enterprise...;) >>> >>> >You've got it backwards Robin, look at who has got all the guns.
No, I have it the right way around, you are the one who has it backwards. Fascism is government in the pocket of business. Business in the pocket of government (to the point that it is owned outright by government) is communism. The former is extreme right wing, the latter extreme left wing. IMO neither of which is desirable for a free, prosperous and happy society, which is generally somewhere in the middle, with as little as possible of either extreme. A good example of government in the pocket of business is the USA, and I suspect Israel. Cuba and China are of course the obvious examples of business in the pocket of government, though China is complicated, being in transition. Russia is also a still a reasonable example of this, despite now ostensibly being a "Western capitalist democracy". Some of the ideas and attitudes of it's communist past still linger. It is also still in transition. The government may have the guns, but the power lies where the money is. That's what gives the Oligarchy power over governments, the media, and the people. It is more subtle, and thus not so obvious, but of tremendous influence nevertheless. >In >fairness to your ideas however, certain wealthy people, who have been >called the Oligarchy, are advancing a G-dless agenda which includes >population reduction, Population reduction is a good idea, but it should be completely voluntary, not enforced, and it should come about through a reduction in the number of children conceived, not through an increase in the death rate. At our current level of technological development, the World is already overpopulated, witness the thousands that are starving to death in the third World. Much of the strife on the planet currently is directly or indirectly due to competition for resources. If the population were lower, the competition wouldn't be so fierce, and the World might be a more peaceful place. BTW, the current rate of population growth World wide is on the order of 1.2% per annum. Now apply the concept of compound interest to that for a thousand years, and see what happens:- 1.012 ^ 1000 = 151535 x 6 billion = 900 trillion for a hundred years:- 1.012 ^ 100 = 3.2 x 6 billion = 19.2 billion Doubling time = 58.1 years. A quote (can't remember the source) - "If we don't reduce the population by decreasing the birth rate, Nature will reduce it by increasing the death rate." Note also that in several Western nations, the population is actually decreasing, which leads some to the conclusion that affluence reduces the birth rate. Based upon this assumption, the introduction of fusion power (in whatever form), should extend that affluence to the entire planet, and hence help to stabilize the population (i.e. reduce the growth rate to zero, or perhaps, with a little luck, make it negative). > sexual immorality, deliberate dumbing down of the >population, and the omnipotent government. Read Brave New World. I read Brave New World decades ago (also Orwell's 1984). Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/Project.html
