Zeitgeist Movement!

[hammy]

socialism wont work as long as people have personalities.
for it to work we need to become the anti spirals :p

[Silvermink]

socialism wont work as long as people have personalities.
for it to work we need to become the anti spirals :p

Well, there's a difference between socialism and ideas (some of which are good ones, IMO) that originate from socialism that doesn't always seem to be appreciated, and I've been a bit vague about it here myself. Socialism as a system of overall government - or communism, if you like - hasn't panned out too well because of people being people, as you say, and being only too happy to hold onto the reins of absolute power rather than let it move forward into collectivism.

Anyway - not to start a big in-depth debate here or anything. I just don't agree with rejecting all socialist concepts out of hand.

[EpicurYeen]

“I’m Andrew Ryan and I’m here to ask you a question: Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? No, says the man in Washington. It belongs to the poor. No, says the man in the Vatican. It belongs to God. No, says the man in Moscow. It belongs to everyone.

I rejected those answers. Instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose…Rapture.

A city where the artist would not fear the censor. Where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality. Where the great would not be contrained by the small. And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well."

~Andrew Ryan, Bioshock


Rapture wasn't impossible to build under the sea, it was impossible to build anywhere else.

[hammy]

RRRRRRAPTURE!!!

big daddy hammy! :D

[Kithop]

"I'm Andrew Ryan and I'm here to ask you a question: Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? No, says the man in Washington. It belongs to the poor. No, says the man in the Vatican. It belongs to God. No, says the man in Moscow. It belongs to everyone.

I rejected those answers. Instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose...Rapture.

A city where the artist would not fear the censor. Where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality. Where the great would not be contrained by the small. And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well."

~Andrew Ryan, Bioshock


Rapture wasn't impossible to build under the sea, it was impossible to build anywhere else.

I kind of got the sentiment from BioShock and Rapture was that they were saying that the whole concept of anarcho-libertarianism is just as flawed as any other system taken to its extreme. <.<;  We get the best benefits from a mixed society 'somewhere in the middle', with some economic freedoms, and some social support structures.  I'd argue right now we lean too far towards the former and not the latter, but that's a whole other rant I'd rather not get into everywhere I go. XD

[Silvermink]

I kind of got the sentiment from BioShock and Rapture was that they were saying that the whole concept of anarcho-libertarianism is just as flawed as any other system taken to its extreme. <.<;  We get the best benefits from a mixed society 'somewhere in the middle', with some economic freedoms, and some social support structures.  I'd argue right now we lean too far towards the former and not the latter, but that's a whole other rant I'd rather not get into everywhere I go. XD

Canada's always been such a delicate balance in that regard. Right-wing party gets in, we lean more toward economic freedoms. Left-wing party gets in, we lean more toward social support structures. I guess what I worry about is some governments doing things that can't be undone (mass privatization, for example).

[Kithop]

Canada's always been such a delicate balance in that regard. Right-wing party gets in, we lean more toward economic freedoms. Left-wing party gets in, we lean more toward social support structures. I guess what I worry about is some governments doing things that can't be undone (mass privatization, for example).

Yeah, I'm pretty much an unabashed damned-dirty-Commie-pinko-bastard - I look at the NDP and sigh about how they've sold themselves out for votes and don't even stand up for their principles anymore, and have gotten themselves into a pissing match with the Liberals (and THEY've done the same thing in B.C. - nowhere near as liberal as the feds, instead it's just a bunch of McCarthyist SoCreds stealing the Liberal name..).  The actual Marxist-Leninist and Communist parties here have like.. next to no support or people running, though (and that fracture makes me think at least one of them is a little crazier than the other).

I used to vote Green, too, when I turned 18, until I realised they basically got taken over by radical Greenpeace-types.  I'm all for the environment, but when you pooh-pooh things like nuclear pebble-bed reactors that can't melt down ever just because they're shit-scared of the word nuclear, I stop listening and write you off as stupid. XD

I look at the situation with the downtown Eastside and homeless people in general, people waiting too long to get healthcare treatment, the loss of programs and increasing class sizes in schools (no love for French Immersion?  So few schools have it, but learning a 2nd language can be extremely powerful, regardless of what language it is - and French is our other official one!), and the working poor, making $8/hr (less than half the break-even point for cost-of-living recently calculated to be around $17/hr!) and no chance of a raise since 2001.. the privatization of BC Rail and seemingly any other crown corp they can get their hand on.. the list goes on and on... what kind of society are we where we let our greed drive our decisions and no longer stop to care for other living beings, be them human, plant, or animal? :/

</rant> XD

[Silvermink]

Yeah, I'm pretty much an unabashed damned-dirty-Commie-pinko-bastard - I look at the NDP and sigh about how they've sold themselves out for votes and don't even stand up for their principles anymore, and have gotten themselves into a pissing match with the Liberals (and THEY've done the same thing in B.C. - nowhere near as liberal as the feds, instead it's just a bunch of McCarthyist SoCreds stealing the Liberal name..).  The actual Marxist-Leninist and Communist parties here have like.. next to no support or people running, though (and that fracture makes me think at least one of them is a little crazier than the other).

I used to be a lot more left-wing than I am now - I've drifted a bit more toward the center. I tend to grump about my taxes (though I like the services they provide) and things like human rights tribunals that always seem to be championed by the left (check out Ezra Levant's book Shakedown, which I haven't yet read myself but have on hold at the library, but I heard him on CBC recently), but still consider myself fundamentally leftist.

I used to vote Green, too, when I turned 18, until I realised they basically got taken over by radical Greenpeace-types.  I'm all for the environment, but when you pooh-pooh things like nuclear pebble-bed reactors that can't melt down ever just because they're shit-scared of the word nuclear, I stop listening and write you off as stupid. XD

Oh, thank god, someone else with an informed opinion on nuclear power. Marry me?

I look at the situation with the downtown Eastside and homeless people in general, people waiting too long to get healthcare treatment, the loss of programs and increasing class sizes in schools (no love for French Immersion?  So few schools have it, but learning a 2nd language can be extremely powerful, regardless of what language it is - and French is our other official one!), and the working poor, making $8/hr (less than half the break-even point for cost-of-living recently calculated to be around $17/hr!) and no chance of a raise since 2001.. the privatization of BC Rail and seemingly any other crown corp they can get their hand on.. the list goes on and on... what kind of society are we where we let our greed drive our decisions and no longer stop to care for other living beings, be them human, plant, or animal? :/

Hey, man, we don't need to raise the minimum wage because um... umm... that is to say... well, we just don't, okay?!

The DTES situation is frankly a blight on everything this city wants to claim for itself, and I really hope Gregor Robertson can help clean things up while he's mayor. It's embarrassing when I call to make camping reservations at Yellowstone (in WYOMING, for god's sake, over 1000 miles from here) and the guy on the phone talks about how Vancouver is weird because it has all this really nice stuff just a couple blocks from a complete pit.

[Kithop]

Hey, man, we don't need to raise the minimum wage because um... umm... that is to say... well, we just don't, okay?!

*cough* http://www.vancouversun.com/Business/minimum+wage+should+raised/1540684/story.html
"The NDP says it should rise to $10, which would make it the highest in Canada but still more than $6 an hour less than what's been identified as the requirement for a basic living wage in Vancouver."

"In the eight years that B.C.'s minimum wage was frozen, inflation drove up the cost of living index. And as businesses raised prices to cover their costs, the average hourly wage in B.C. was also increased over the same period. It rose by 24 per cent. Provincial politicians voted themselves a 29-per-cent increase over the same period. Some senior public servants were granted increases even greater than that by the legislature.

This effectively means that while the mainstream shielded itself from inflation with wage and price increases, those working poor compelled to accept the frozen statutory minimum saw the purchasing power of their wages erode by 17.4 per cent.

If, as economists from the Centre of Policy Alternatives argue, the basic cost of food, clothing, housing and transportation in Greater Vancouver and greater Victoria now require an hourly a wage of at least $16.74 simply to survive, it means tens of thousands of the working poor are condemned to live on less than an adequate living wage." (all emphasis mine)

I mean, I could pretty much quote that whole article, but yeah.  It's pretty damning, especially when the supposedly right-wing 'Liberals' gave themselves a massive pay-hike as a giant f*ck you to the rest of the province...  My attitude is, if you work hard, full time (40hr/wk-ish), no matter what you do you should be able to afford to live.  You may not get fancy luxuries like big-screen TVs or high-speed Internet, but you should be able to afford a roof over your head, clothes, food, etc.  The current, horribly deflated minimum wage puts the working poor WAY under the poverty line.  You want to help fix the DTES?  Help stop said working poor from getting evicted and ending up on the streets in the first place.

Raising the minimum wage may drive up inflation, but honestly I don't really see an alternative when it's gotten this far out of hand - we need to erode some of the ultra-rich's savings and bring their standards down so we can get the working poor back on their feet.  That may make me a Commie bastard, but I tend to think of it as basic human compassion...something that's been sorely missing in politics these days. :/

[Kithop]

Oh, thank god, someone else with an informed opinion on nuclear power. Marry me?

:D  Yeah.  I'm big on green/renewable energy, but nuclear power is a good intermediate stepping stone - it's safer than coal (which puts out MORE radiation than nuke plants due to the isotopes in the smoke!), doesn't flood huge areas like hydroelectric dams do (though here it doesn't make sense NOT to use them when the Columbia river is one of the largest vertical drops in the shortest lenghts in the world!), and doesn't take as much real estate as wind or solar for equivalent power outputs.  Run the 'waste' from CANDU/standard reactors through something like a pebble bed, and the resulting 'waste' is much much safer/easier to store with a much shorter half-life, not to mention with the design of pebble bed, there's no way to really screw up - the fuel is never at the point where it can go critical, and if you lose containment the reaction just fizzles out.

I'm not a nuclear physicist or anything, but dammit - logic should be involved in policy decisions! XD

[Silvermink]

Yeah, I don't understand the popular view on nuclear power, which is something along the lines of "oh no, we can't do it because it's so skeery! Let's continue destroying ecosystems by damming rivers and pumping toxic smoke into the atmosphere instead".

And yeah, I was pretty much paraphrasing what seems to be the business community's take on minimum wages. They have the mistaken impression that people working for minimum wage are all kids living with their parents who want spending money.

[Chi Chi]

They have the mistaken impression that people working for minimum wage are all kids living with their parents who want spending money.

Which sadly is not the reality for so many T_T