” At our level of technological advancement, Malthusian scarcity is an artificial chimera. In case you haven’t noticed, humans are not animals, they invent stuff like transportation grids and refrigeration. This planet can produce enough of everything for everyone, it’s just a matter of ahem, WILL. “
Oh, I am sure you are not a Leftist now.
“it’s just a matter of ahem, WILL”
And what role does changing dopamine sensitivity have on will/drive? Is there any difference between will (or the related competitiveness), and r and K-selected psychologies?
If scarcity can never happen, where did the Great Depression come from, after the roaring twenties? Why do I know a lady whose parents were turning starving people away from her back door, when they came begging for a single piece of bread?
Productivity is dependent on K-qualities. Competitiveness, drive, and group functionality. As we are r-selected, these traits diminish. This has ancillary effects. Money holds less value. People trust each other less, and eventually an economic collapse erodes the cooperation which produced the productivity which yielded the higher carrying capacity allowing for the r-environment, and then it all comes down.
It has happened before, as in Rome, where the technology was there, but everybody just lacked the WILL to produce enough to support themselves, and the welfare leaches, all together.
I point you to Greece today, where Golden Dawn is going around stabbing any immigrant they can find in the ass with an ambassador knife, to make them leave the nation.
Our economy will do the same thing, no matter who holds office in the coming years. And you will see our own Golden Dawn’s arise, many of which will probably be not so nice.
If you can’t acknowledge that the coming economic slowdown/collapse is going to be nasty, if you are still telling yourself that Malthusian scarcity is a myth, you are shielding your amygdala from the very anxiety this post produced in your first response here.
It will suck to be you in the coming years.
The shite may hit the rotors, it may not. Predictions are a bar stool cottage industry. Free Republic readers were predicting Romney, if you recall, and Romney himself seemed surprised that it got out from under him. After all his hard work, two years worth with no serious stumbling and a lackluster performance by Obama in the debates, Obama still took the flag. Why? One word...media. If it comes down to tooth and claw, the militias had best take out the nation’s power grid first thing, cuz the 6 o:clock news won’t be friendly. This isn’t going to play like the years before our Civil War when Republicans were being shot down in Southern streets with impunity. It’s going to play like Oklahoma city and Waco. It’s going to suck to be you also, my friend.
Now to my main point, war drives technology, period. The strategic winners have better technology and the mental/organizational infrastructure it’s based on every time, whether raw materiel, long bows, horse mobility or A-bombs. The surplus productive capacity of WWI, and more particularly, WWII and the subsequent Cold War, created the rabbit breeding environment you have such a problem with. Our productive base made Marxism effectively vanish in the S.U and China’s Politbureau is just another board room in effect. That’s called victory.
Your K environment lawfully evolves to an r environment every time. What you will need is a global governance of some sort that can regulate the quantity of war vs. its absence, like the Aztec “War of the Flowers”, a matter of combat theatrics to provide sacrificial victims for the temples. Say good bye to nation state sovereignty and federated republics if you want to achieve any sort of K dominant stasis in the K vs. r. schematic. The smart ones will join the invisible hand priesthood at the center playing one side off against the other.