left libertarianism

[K-Dog]

In the water protector camp people speculate that the pipeline is being built so oil can be exported overseas.  I am sure that if the owners of the pipeline get it built and if they can make money shipping oil to China that is exactly what they will do.  The pipeline project was not started by men of conscience.  It was started by rich men who want to get richer and who really don't give a damn about anything else.  These men planned heavy handed tactics to defeat opposition from the very start.  Hopefully that will be their undoing.

<-- Standing for Standing Rock.

How thick does a pipeline have to be to drain the Bakken?

Within the Bakken Formation were 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels, for an average of 3.65 billion barrels.  The drone footage of the DAPL I have watched shows a pipe that is far larger than needed to drain the Bakken.  Perhaps the DAPL may be an end around to the Keystone Pipeline to drain Canada for overseas export.  To test my theory does anybody know how thick the DAPL pipe is and how that diameter compares to the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System?

The Prudhoe deposit was 25 billion barrels.  The Bakken has less than 15% as much oil as Prudhoe did.  An appropriately sized pipe would need less than 40% the width the Trans-Alaska Pipeline has for an accurate comparison.

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[JRM]

The reason nomenclature like "Green Libertarian Socialism" is invented is because Communism has been so thoroughly trashed by the propaganda machine in the FSoA over the last century.  So the lefty crowd looks for new buzzwords to identify the ideas that hopefully are more palatable to J6P.

This is a reasonably good explanation for some alternative nomenclature, but it's not a full explanation.  A full explanation would need to acknowledge that there are many theoretical orientations (and preferences of kind) of communalism.  They are very many, very diverse.

Another major problem with the above quoted words is that it fails to acknowledge that capital C Communism in places like the Soviet Union and China ended up being very oppressive and brutal regimes in which the common people had/have had little opportunity to influence or direct their societies.  E.g., Tiananmen Square, 1989;  Great Purge (Russia), 1936 to 1938- "It has been estimated between 600,000 and 3 million people died at the hands of the Soviet government during the Purge."  ... "The political purge was primarily an effort by Stalin to eliminate challenge from past and potential opposition groups, including the left and right wings led by Leon Trotsky and Nikolai Bukharin, respectively."

Therefore, it was not just Western Cold War propoganda which tarnished the word Communism, but the "Communists" themselves.

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[RE]

They are very many, very diverse.

Yes of course.  just like there are many, diverse forms of sexuality.  Where have I heard this before?   

RE

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[Eddie]

I consider her perhaps the best living American author. Three of her books touched me deeply, and I've read a couple more that were very good.

High on my list:

The Lacuna

The Poisonwood Bible (also historically accurate, but about missionaries in the Congo)

Flight Behavior (the best novel about climate change ever written, and very salient today)

Never heard of any of these. Tnx, Eddie!

I went to Half Price Books tonight and bought 'The Lacuna' and another of Barbara Kingsolver's books 'Pigs in Heaven', that one only on her reputation as a writer.  A few pages into 'Lacuna' I was happy with both purchases though I still know nothing about the second.  She writes really well.  The reviews I read were right.

My original reason for going was to find  books by Gene Logsdon as recommended in 'From Filmers to Farmers' but I struck out on that.

Pigs in heaven is an excellent book, the first one I read of hers. Someone had left it in my cabin in '95 when we sailed to the USVI. I read it at sea. More of a fun read than the others I mentioned. Enjoy.

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[JRM]

RE: Oh, gawd. Voting. 

Think about it. We're just starting Step 3 - choosing who is to govern now that all the ancient regime is in the stadium living on hot-dogs (if they have enough cash on them).  GO and JRM both want to have their go at being President, Libertarian Right v Libertarian Left.  Both have their supporters.  It would be good if they could explore areas of agreement, so we can just actually form a government and DO the simple stuff, but they only want to talk up their differences.  How to choose?  How?

Both agree everybody over the age of 18 should have a voice, except those in the stadium.   How else, other than voting?  Fighting?  Ice-picks at midnight?   Each make your choice of Champion Fighter and only one to leave the cage alive?  It would make for a good noire movie, but voting is so much more adult.  So voting it is - you can always claim the voting was rigged if you lose, or have a schism and split into two countries.  Actually schism does sound the most likely, and that's what I'm afraid of.

BTW, this thread is going nowhere.

I don't think the thread is going nowhere. I think it's not going where any one of us might take it if it was ours alone to direct its course.  Such is any collaboration where all of the participants have different notions of what should be done.

I'm no expert on anarchism, by any means, but one thing many anarchists agree on is that voting is at least somewhat problematic. Some of those problems are addressed by constitutions, a Bill of Rights, etc., and some are not.  On obvious problem with voting within a winner takes all system is that if a thousand people are voting and winning is a simple majority then 501 people can run roughshod over the minority of 499 people.  This can be quite an unjustice, obviously.  I hear parliamentary systems with proportional representation address this tendency toward injustice better than the sort of winner-take-all system employed in the USA.

There are lots of other potential problems with voting, potentially.  Would your preferred society have a pure form of direct democracy, or would it be representational?   Representation is not considered legitimate by anarchists generally.  And I'd not want a form of socialism which didn't embody a lot of anarchist ideals.   

Anarchists would, of course, rarely have an opportunity to have their votes count in our present world.

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[Eddie]

I'm closest to RE in my personal thinking, with his neo-tribal model. I don't look for salvation from the left or the right, and most people in the world are poorly prepared to vote in any kind of intelligent manner on anything important. Real democracy, if instituted today, would be idiocracy.

This planet was a better neighborhood when more of it was open land, and small groups could aggregate and sink or swim together on the merits of their hard work and the CFS or lack thereof of their philosophy.

If it weren't for climate change, the thing to do would just be to raise a new generation with a view toward going tribal when most of the idiots either kill each other off or starve to death.

As it stands, we are most likely just farting in the wind. It looks fairly certain, now, how the world as we know it will end. Unless somebody pushes a big red button and Trumps the game. Perhaps the solution for climate change might be a nuclear winter.

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[K-Dog]

They are very many, very diverse.

Yes of course.  just like there are many, diverse forms of sexuality.  Where have I heard this before?   

RE

Don't worry, you have a firm grip on the situation.  We know because you shared your particular flavor of sexual diversity with us here.

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[JRM]

I'm closest to RE in my personal thinking, with his neo-tribal model. I don't look for salvation from the left or the right, and most people in the world are poorly prepared to vote in any kind of intelligent manner on anything important. Real democracy, if instituted today, would be idiocracy.

This planet was a better neighborhood when more of it was open land, and small groups could aggregate and sink or swim together on the merits of their hard work and the CFS or lack thereof of their philosophy.

If it weren't for climate change, the thing to do would just be to raise a new generation with a view toward going tribal when most of the idiots either kill each other off or starve to death.

As it stands, we are most likely just farting in the wind. It looks fairly certain, now, how the world as we know it will end. Unless somebody pushes a big red button and Trumps the game. Perhaps the solution for climate change might be a nuclear winter.

Yeah, the climate.  .... But even if we only have 50,100, 150, 200 years left as a species, I'd still prefer to TRY and make our goverment / governance more just, more kind, more fair, and more sensitive to other species and the biosphere.  So it matters to me, this thing you're calling "farting in the wind".   

Just because so many today are stupid is no reason to assume that such a large percentage of folks will always be so stupid.  Most are stupid because the folks running the show preferred to have them stupid, over generations.  And they got what they wanted.  Sadly.

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[Eddie]

Just because so many today are stupid is no reason to assume that such a large percentage of folks will always be so stupid.  Most are stupid because the folks running the show preferred to have them stupid, over generations.  And they got what they wanted.  Sadly.

This is correct, of course. But don't forget, the vast majority of people in this country have been more than willing to take some industrial job for the last several generations that gave them good pay and benefits. Spend their paychecks at Walmart and the Mall and Best Buy.

They chose ignorance over knowledge, and the easy path when they could have just as easily chosen sustainable culture and skilled labor. They wanted a George Jetson job...show up and push a few buttons. Nobody worried much about the environmental cost of industrial civilization until the gravy train started drying up.

I don't hold collective human intelligence in high regard.

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[JRM]

Nobody worried much about the environmental cost of industrial civilization until the gravy train started drying up.

"Nobody" is, of course, a rather extreme exaggeration.  Not enough bodies? That's a fact.  But we are not nobody.  We number in many millions.

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[JRM]

In 1969, Paul Shepard and Daniel McKinley published the provocatively titled book, Subversive Science: Essays Towards an Ecology of Man
. The title was more apt than even they would have guessed.  Since those days there has been a growing "subversive" eco-cultural movement, the intent of which has always been to bring human culture and economy in accord with the long term needs of all humans, other species and the integrity of the biosphere itself.

adjective
1.
Also, subversionary  [suh b-vur-zhuh-ner-ee, -shuh-]

tending or intending to subvert or overthrow, destroy, or undermine an established or existing system, especially a legally constituted government or a set of beliefs.

American Heritage Dictionary

At times I've mentioned this title to people, and more often than not they found the title a bit ridiculous.  A "science" can't be subversive, they said.  "Well, if that's so, then why is the political right doing everything it can to subvert both the science and its meaningful application in the real world?" I would ask.

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[RE]

I don't hold collective human intelligence in high regard.

Half the population has an IQ under 100 to begin with.  Sprinkle in a little crappy education, and you can keep everyone with an IQ under 120 pretty stupid.  It's not the fault of the people they are stupid, but it is the fault of people who took advantage of their stupidity for self aggrandizement.  That would be all the CRIMINALS in the Top 10% bracket of annual income.

RE

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[Ka]

The reason nomenclature like "Green Libertarian Socialism" is invented is because Communism has been so thoroughly trashed by the propaganda machine in the FSoA over the last century.  So the lefty crowd looks for new buzzwords to identify the ideas that hopefully are more palatable to J6P.

A Rose by any other name... 

RE

No, it's not just buzzwords. Socialism is governmental control of the means of production. Communism is (quoting Wikipedia) "the social, political, and economic ideology and movement whose ultimate goal is the establishment of the communist society, which is a socioeconomic order structured upon the common ownership of the means of production and the absence of social classes, money, and the state." The theoretical basis for the Communist parties that ran the USSR, China, etc., was that by establishing socialism, a communist society would eventually emerge. That is why the second S is USSR is "Socialist" and not "Communist".

Now I think we can agree that the communist socioeconomic order described would be a wonderful thing, but I for one do not think its emergence is inevitable. In fact, I can't imagine it happening at all short of a global cure of Original Sin (to put it in Christian terms -- think "Maya" for those of other religious persuasions), and while I personally think that will happen someday, it won't happen through political means. You can't force people to be good. All you can do is remove the survival problem, and let them think for themselves. So as I see it, to call yourself a communist is to promise more than you can deliver.


Hence I am not a Communist, because I am leaving that assumption of the emergence of a communist society out of the picture. I would like it to happen, but that's just personal, not a political goal. But that "let them think for themselves" is the reason to include the modifier "libertarian". While I am very religious, I would not want to exclude atheists from the political process, as long as they are ok with religious people being included. In fact, I would prefer that both religous and non-religious be in charge. Let Darwinism and Intelligent Design be both taught as "this is what some people think, and why they think that, and that is what other people think, and why" The only exception is, of course, that any religious group that attempts to force conversion must be suppressed, as being violators of the freedom of others.

As for greenery, well, that's just CFS as far as economic means and goals are concerned in a world of declining resources and climate change. It is really more intended to modify 'libertarian' than 'socialism', in that it emphasizes that one's personal freedom does not extend to doing things that harm the biosphere.

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[Eddie]

Ka, your prognostication is missing one important element.

Military Intelligence. Since when did the military (any country) ever do anything green?

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[JRM]

I don't hold collective human intelligence in high regard.

Edward Bernays agrees with you.   Minute 18.+ - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F1M0Viy_iA

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