Soros sez we are all F*cked!

[flintlock]

Re: Soros sez we are all F*cked!

To some folks everything is about race.

[Sapiens]

Re: Soros sez we are all F*cked!

How did this thread go from an economic perspective (we're all fucked) to racism? Interesting

It is called Political Economy, is it not? What do you think is a fundamental factor of the Political element?

Let's leave it at that. Ciao.

[Raz]

Re: Soros sez we are all F*cked!

the usa has plenty of ugly racist history. racism used to be widely socially acceptable, now less so. that is an improvement. but i can see racism coming back... along with other ...isms as the depression goes on and on.

the press is right to take a hard line on it going into hard times.

I will both agree and disagree with you. My father was a racist and I lived almost half of my life in the Mississippi Delta. I have seen firsthand not only the ugliness but the lasting damage done to the objects of race hatred and the spiritual damage the race hater does to himself. But NONE of that was the point of discussion. The point of discussion was: why are there two sets of rules - one for Republicans and another for Democrats?:confused:

The current American press is so corrupt and biased against anything that doesn't eminate from the left of the political spectrum that whenever they take a hard line against anyone or anything I immediately question their motives as, shall we say, less than sincere.

[metalman]

Re: Soros sez we are all F*cked!

I will both agree and disagree with you. My father was a racist and I lived almost half of my life in the Mississippi Delta. I have seen firsthand not only the ugliness but the lasting damage done to the objects of race hatred and the spiritual damage the race hater does to himself. But NONE of that was the point of discussion. The point of discussion was: why are there two sets of rules - one for Republicans and another for Democrats?:confused:

The current American press is so corrupt and biased against anything that doesn't eminate from the left of the political spectrum that whenever they take a hard line against anyone or anything I immediately question their motives as, shall we say, less than sincere.

i disagree...

[deflateIT]

Re: Soros sez we are all F*cked!

the usa has plenty of ugly racist history. racism used to be widely socially acceptable, now less so. that is an improvement. but i can see racism coming back... along with other ...isms as the depression goes on and on.

the press is right to take a hard line on it going into hard times.

I was thinking the same thing...

Do you think in the end they will try to shift all the blame on Obama because he is, you know, black?

[metalman]

Re: Soros sez we are all F*cked!

I was thinking the same thing...

Do you think in the end they will try to shift all the blame on Obama because he is, you know, black?

not sure what you mean... that the economic crisis may bring out latent racism in the press?

[deflateIT]

Re: Soros sez we are all F*cked!

not sure what you mean... that the economic crisis may bring out latent racism in the press?

I mean that they will try to blame all the economic problems on Obama when it gets really tough in a year or so and the fact that he is black will be used against him?

[Raz]

Re: Soros sez we are all F*cked!

Metalman:

This is a joke, right? You post a youtube video featuring Noam Chomsky the Anarchist/Socialist telling us that even if the media was composed of 99% members of the Socialist Workers Party it would prove nothing about media bias? That only who OWNS the media outlet can provide an inference as to bias? Well I guess that settles it for me! If Murdoch owns it then those who work for him are all right-wing automatons held captive by their political beliefs while the owners of the Times demand and obtain unbiased altruistic perfection from their employees who present the clear, unslanted truth - in spite of their leftist beliefs.

I really don't know what to say. I hope this is a joke.

[metalman]

Re: Soros sez we are all F*cked!

Metalman:

This is a joke, right? You post a youtube video featuring Noam Chomsky the Anarchist/Socialist telling us that even if the media was composed of 99% members of the Socialist Workers Party it would prove nothing about media bias? That only who OWNS the media outlet can provide an inference as to bias? Well I guess that settles it for me! If Murdoch owns it then those who work for him are all right-wing automatons held captive by their political beliefs while the owners of the Times demand and obtain unbiased altruistic perfection from their employees who present the clear, unslanted truth - in spite of their leftist beliefs.

I really don't know what to say. I hope this is a joke.

i'm kinda pulling your leg... sort of. they all work for fire economy interests. period. that's why the 'stocks only go up' and 'housing only goes up' and 'no housing bubble' and blah, blah, blah. forget left and right. it's only been about the relations between the state and private enterprise for the past 30 yrs, with fire dominating and the reporters and editors' political beliefs figuring into it not at all. that's why commie pubic radio npr reports the same financial crapola as fox news.

[krakknisse]

Re: Soros sez we are all F*cked!

History, however, is full of examples where scarcity of some resource was resolved by development - through free market price incentives - of even better alternatives. As economist Julian Simon noted, in England in the 1700s there was a "firewood crisis" ...

Time and again the doomsters predict permanent shortage of some resource

I'm well aware of these "peak stuff" resilience mechanisms. But there are quite a few good examples of societal collapse which remain unexplained in the "cornucopian" thread of thinking. What makes you so sure that there won't be significant political meddling in the process of adjustment to peak oil? It is self evident that - sooner or later - cheap oil will peak. It is the adjustment that is critical. If the meddling is sufficiently FUBARed, then we might be in for a world of hurt.

I strongly recommend "The collapse of complex societies".
On Google Books: http://books.google.com/books?id=M4H...ummary_r&cad=0
He studies the following societal collapses:

• Harappan Civilization
• Mesopotamia
• Egyptian Old Kingdom
• the Hitite Empire
• Minoan Civilization
• Mycanean civilization
• the Western Roman Empire
• the Olmec
• the Lowland Maya
• the Mesoamerican Highlands
• Casas Grandes
• the Chacoans
• the Hohokam
• the Eastern Woodlands
• the Huari empire
• the Kachin
• the Ik

It is a long list - showing that societal collapses can occur at a wide variety of population sizes, ecologies and technological development. Natural resource limitations figure large in this analysis, but poor governance forms the yin to "peak resources" yang. For example, the Maya went in a few decades from large cities of hundreds of thousands of people to a fraction of that population size with the disappearance of any form of centralized government

Even if you don't study collapse per se, even a mainstream historian such as Paul Kennedy has a few points that should make a prudent man get a blimp on his "caution" radar. In the Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, he argues that China was in fact the dominant world power for a major portion of world history. Through various "accidents of history", Europe gained the upper hand. Not least, the warring between smaller European states kept a dysfunctional centralizing cleptocracy from appearing as it had in China. Does "centralizing cleptocracy" ring any bells?

Believe me, I really believe in the significant advantages of an open and free society (rule of law etc.). But the last year's development have only reinforced my suspicion of a deep-seated dysfunction, nay - corruption, in Western culture. The widespread groupthink of cornucopian "it's all going to be waanerful, waanerful" reflects this dysfunction in the education of our citizens. I hear a lot of "they're going to fix it", and not a lot of "I've got to be prudent for myself and my kids".

Which is why I'm worried enough to consider significant societal perturbations on my future event horizons. In one word: potatoes - learn to grow them. I have umpteen years of postgraduate education, academic qualifications and a reasonably secure job. But I'm expecting to BOHICA. Over, and over, and over again. Maybe it is a question of marginal returns on career development. But if "monoculture" of my career simply leads me to be a better leeching target, I'd rather have my clients (and society) receive a slightly less polished product and spend a proportion of my intellectual and other resources on preparing to be BOHICAed.

In short: the reasons for me being a doomer are well considered, based on a minority but not unreasonable academic tradition, and a wide reading of recent history and current events. And of course, ITulip is a significant portion of that - so thank you all guys!

[krakknisse]

Re: Soros sez we are all F*cked!

I strongly recommend "The collapse of complex societies".

A more recent paper by deMenocal, "Cultural Responses to Climate Change During the Late Holocene" (Science 2001) has more recent data on previous societal collapses.

Abstract: Modern complex societies exhibit marked resilience to interannual-to- decadal droughts, but cultural responses to multidecadal-to-multicentury droughts can only be addressed by integrating detailed archaeological and paleoclimatic records. Four case studies drawn from New and Old World civilizations document societal responses to prolonged drought, including population dislocations, urban abandonment, and state collapse. Further study of past cultural adaptations to persistent climate change may provide valuable perspective on possible responses of modern societies to future climate change.

It is a good paper, covering even the collapse of the Roanoke colony.

And on the Maya:

The Classic Maya empire collapsed at the peak of their cultural development between ca. 750 and 900 A.D., as determined by the number of sites engaged in monument construction across Mesoamerica at any given time (45) (Fig. 5). Following the apex of monument construction in 721 A.D., signs of collapse began to show between 750 and 790 A.D. Construction effectively ceased throughout the region after 830 A.D., and in 909 A.D., the last monument in southern Quintana Roo, Mexico, was inscribed with the Maya Long Count date (44). Many reasons for the collapse have been cited, including overpopulation, deforestation and soil erosion, social upheaval, warfare, and disease, as well as natural phenomena, such as climate change (46, 47). Deforestation, erosion, and dense human occupation are well-documented in many regions before the collapse (46, 48, 49).

200 years of fossil-fueled prosperity is not a long time period on which to make unambigious predictions on the future.

[ProdigyofZen]

Re: Soros sez we are all F*cked!

lol deflate, i think the exact opposite. Obama is TOO BIG to fail his presidency is a "god send", nothing the man does will be blamed on him for the simple fact that he is black! He can start WWIII and it won't be his fault because he is black. I am in the camp that most white people have "white guilt" and do anything possible to prop up blacks etc and will blame anybody but a black person becuase if they are seen criticising a minority or "writing a scathing article about them" they are automatically called a racist.

being called a racist today is the same as being called a heretic in the 16th century, its a made up word........

[FRED]

Re: Soros sez we are all F*cked!

lol deflate, i think the exact opposite. Obama is TOO BIG to fail his presidency is a "god send", nothing the man does will be blamed on him for the simple fact that he is black! He can start WWIII and it won't be his fault because he is black. I am in the camp that most white people have "white guilt" and do anything possible to prop up blacks etc and will blame anybody but a black person becuase if they are seen criticising a minority or "writing a scathing article about them" they are automatically called a racist.

being called a racist today is the same as being called a heretic in the 16th century, its a made up word........

I am taking us off the topic of race on iTulip. It is divisive and distracts us from our mission. We have seen great web sites that have developed over a dozen years crash and burn as a few members hijack the discussion and take it into the reptilian brain level topics, where emotion dominates thought, that are not directly related to the topics this sight's main topics. Future hijackings of threads started to discuss economics and finance that devolve into arguments about race will be deleted.

[Debt-freeTICer]

Re: Soros sez we are all F*cked!

Neither have I. I'm from Mississippi and I NEVER voted for Trent Lott, but do you remember when he made a remark at Strom Thurmond's 90th Birthday Party about how the U.S. would have been better off had it voted for old Strom in 1948? I think the remark was foolish (and I don't think the U.S. would have been better off), but Trent obviously was only trying to make the old man feel good on what was the LAST birthday of his life. But the Press screamed Bloody-Murder until Lott was removed as Majority Leader!!! Someone told Trent that he should just "switch his membership over to the Democratic Party, and then he could say any damn thing he wanted to!"

I think Tom Daschle blew it. He should have replied to his tax problems with, "It's Bush's fault I didn't pay my taxes. I was so busy keeping an eye on him, I just overlooked them." If he had done this, he would be approved by now.:p

[ProdigyofZen]

Re: Soros sez we are all F*cked!

you deleted my post? thanks Fred, stifel debate even more!