An Attempt to Explain How We Got Here...Unable to Pay the Bills

George, it is not word games at all.

There are a few basic ideas that some of us are absolutely convinced about and it is difficult to make someone give up a life-time worth of experience.

These ideas are the following:

1./ The situation is past the point of no-return. We can't go back to the sixties before things started going wrong. We can't go back because it is not the fifties when it was possible and inevitable.

2./ Something drastic is bound to happen, sooner rather than later, because of climate change and the world-political situation (US going down, Asia coming up) - no regime change on the global scale has ever been peaceful: the old empire is desperately trying to hang on to its loot but is not strong enough to do it.

3./ In the coming major realignment an awful lot of people will be hurt and there is nothing anyone can do about it. It is Tommy's runaway train.

4./ All we can constructively do is think about the after, if there will be one. We have to try to devise a system that is conceptually clear and sustainable. If we recreate the same old undefined  mixture of capitalism and communism (which is what Socialism is) than the same problems will develop, with a lot more deadly technology this time.

5./ Every effort trying to patch up the "good old days" is a wasted effort, however understandable. Nobody likes to contemplate collapse and the ensuing catastrophy for millions but History has a tendency of rolling over our wishes. That is why I said: truth (what I consider to be true) is cold blooded.

6./ On the Utopia thread I made a stab at a possible social contract that might work, given a chance, even with less than Utopian human nature. Take a look and be gentle, I have not worked out all the details yet.

absentia wrote:

First, they abrogated the means of production and turned us into wage-slaves. Then they suborned our system of government and turned us into debt-slaves. Then they pulled the means of production, and thus wage- and tax-base out from under us, and turned us into a  serf economy. That was rather short-sighted of them, no?

No, I think it was very clever of financial capitalists. Marx believed that financial capital would always take a back seat to industrial capitalism, and it was because he assumed industrial capitalists and politicians would alway realize the parasitic nature of financial capital and therefore prevent it from occurring. It would be insane to allow financial capitalism to become the driving force of capitalism. And yet, it's exactly what has happened over the last 35 years. I think that if we want to regain those relationships between workers who battle owners of the means of production, then we have to work to get it back. Financial capitalism is wrecking whole nations.

I can't see western economies allowing this bankers' coup to continue for too many years while China and BRIC countries continue  surging ahead.  There will be major changes to the western world financial system within ten years. Something will give way.

Some things are inevitable, sadly. Like closing threads for length. Hey! Like this one!