Dawn of thieves’

I couldn't agree more. And i'm happy to see that some people are still
able to think with their own mind.
As for SL economy...society in virtual worlds is functioning differently
than we are used to, simply because the world changes faster in there.
I would strongly recommend anyone living or creating in a virtual world
to be aware of that.

I am amazed you understood what he was saying.

I'm all for a renaissance..lets go back to main street way of life instead of corporation way of life that fails for those not in the corporations..

main street way of life was successful way of life where corporation way of life has us all feeling the pinch already..yet they still are doing good..
i can see what it holds for us with them in charge..they had an unregulated chance to prove themselves and they did what they will always do..steal or put people in the poorhouse when given the chance..

it's not in the cards that they will turn good and make it a perfect world..they never have yet..nobody has or will..

those who don't look to history and learn from the past are doomed in the future..

Nice to hear that. Now try refocusing this emotional reaction into your own
thinking and you might get his point too someday.

Nothing emotional, just saying I could not understand what that was saying. Something tells me you have an inside track.

But it was emotional. It was fear driving you into "seeing" an alt instead of
getting the point of a message. Pretty much as it is fear that makes someone
wish to own an idea. So instead of keep being creative people are whining
about others "stealing" their ideas and bye bye creativity....sad.

Yeah, OK. If it was emotional for you, knock yourself out.

Fear? ... About what? Fear of triple negatives applied to shifting tenses? That's more of Peewee's realm. I was mildly amused about the oxymoron in the statement but not enough to figure out through all the don'ts if it was supposed to be a good thing or bad.

Please, do not project your feelings on to me. To me the quoted text is a chaotic list of words. If you feel he has some valid points, why not try to restate them in a way I might understand? As it is, the closest thing I have to an emotion about it all is apathy. I am only typing here because I am bored with the hate being spread in my usual haunt. If you can give me a reason to discuss whatever the hell is being talked about I would welcome the diversion. If you just want to spread more anger and hate, I'm out of here as well.

Interesting that this thread has morphed into a discussion of different politico-economic systems.

I don't share Kyrah's antipathy for capitalism, because I believe that everyone deserves the fruits of his or her own efforts. I also feel that because wealth is produced, it's best if wealth is distributed based on productivity rather than on need. (By wealth, I mean food, housing, energy, services, manufactured goods, etc., and not mere money.) If we kill the incentive for productivity, we lose the benefit.

However, I have often considered her premise that, at some point, technology may make it so that wealth isn't actually produced by human effort. Other than natural resources, it might require little other than direction (i.e., what do we want today?)

In this case, I doubt whether capitalism is appropriate, at least, for basic needs and those things that are easily provided. I would still affirm that an individual is entitled to the fruits of his or her efforts, but that's a value judgement on my part rather than an inescapable truism, and needn't be fundamental to the economic system even if it's nearly a universal value.

In such a world, the value of new ideas would be significant (in terms of desirability). Whether capitalism would be the appropriate economic framework is quite another matter, however. I suspect not.

"Money implies poverty" - the slogan of Iain Bank's post scarcity civilization.

As opposed to a completely different set of problems we'd have under some other system.

Right, capitalism is a terrible economic system. Just better than any others we've tried.

Trouble with that, is that poverty has been around a lot longer than money.

We've forgotten a lot of the lessons of our history. Humanity has gone through thousands upon thousands of social experiments, of which many varied ones proved to be very successful within their environments.

Modern society is arguably the result of nomadic raiders figuring out that it's an easier life to tax and protect agrarian village societies, rather than have to continually rape and loot them ~ a dangerous, highly inefficient process for all concerned. This had everything to do with power and wealth, not high minded ideas... but pretty much worked no matter how stupid or angry any of the parties to the arrangement were.

A further step toward peace came when village societies in many parts of the world decided that everyone had to marry a woman from outside their villages, rather than from within. Thus making it far less likely that villages would go to violent war with each other (amongst solving certain other problems).

Bushfires have been around a lot longer than careless smokers.

Just to further derail the thread:

First, we were hunter-gatherers.

Later, we adopted concentrated agrarian civilizations. This is typically seen as "progress", but comparative analysis of the remains of hunter gatherers and agrarians living at the same time and region shows that the HG's lived longer, were healthier, and had far fewer serious injuries. This shouldn't be surprising, since AC's had limited diets, and concentration bred disease and violence.

There's good historic evidence to support this, as well. When Europeans were colonizing North America, it was noted by Europeans that while many Euros "went native", very few aboriginals chose to live among the Euros (and most of them were severe alcoholics). Euros remarked on the height, strength, beauty, health, and happiness of the Aboriginals, whereas the latter (in the few written accounts taken by Euros) claimed that the Euros were scawny, unhealthy, smelly, and miserable. Not that the Euros were all bad and the Aboriginals all good, but there was a remarkable difference in obvious health and welfare.

So, why did agrarian civilizations essentially replace HGs?

The answer isn't too complicated.

1) AC could support far more people per acre than HG
2) AC permits specialization, including a non-working ruling elite and warrior classes

So, the AC essentially out-competed the HG.

Pastoral nomadism was just one of many competing social structures. Several of these had significant historical consequences (evidencing themselves in the structure of modern languages). Most had little lasting impact, and modern civilization reflects a wide variety of other influences that were at least as strong. Pastoral nomadism did, however, serve to distribute and disseminate a wide variety of different cultural influences, as did maritime cultures.