Well, I’ll say this. I’ll try a lot of things, but I’m absolutely NOT going to become an agrarian. That’s not happening. My name in a co-op would be Agent Orange for my ability to kill plants…

But seriously, EVERY system will have inefficiencies. And it would be important to minimize them.

Moreover, it would be imperative to iron out the logistics because as bnw pointed out, you can’t grow corn in Arizona.

Now, a renunciation of capitalism would allow for a return to sustainable farming, an embrace of fully organic farming and other farming techniques like abandoning mono-crops which would allow for less pesticide use and better land use. Also, the use of hemp for multiple purposes as a rotational crop would also allow for massive CO2 reductions as well as soil retention and mineral replenishment.

One thing we didn’t have prior to capitalism was rapid innovation. Development of tools, for example came at a very slow pace and that was with survival as an impetus which is a pretty damn strong reason to develop new tools.

The what drives innovation is the free time to study. What allows that is the aggregation of capital. In a system that requires the contribution of work, is study considered work? If so, by whom? There have been many advances that were considered heretical at the time that were found to be seminal and important years later. In a fully democratized system, that research wouldn’t be allowed because the resources wouldn’t be allocated by the collective. “Group think” is a VERY real thing in the sciences as is EGO. Ask any person in the sciences who’s ever been asked to defend their work. Very few are selfless about it. Most, certainly not all, but most are terribly territorial about their work. Just watch the movie “And the Band Played On”. The American researcher (played sickeningly well by Alan Alda) held up AIDS research when the French team had nailed it because he wanted an American to discover the cause and then only relented to share it under protest and pressure. Didn’t matter to him that people were dying every day. He just wanted an American to get credit in the history books. For Science! /gag

Yeah…THEIR work. Not, the work of the people or scientific work that they contribute to the people…THEIR work…more possessive than a hedge fund manager of his money.

With Climate Change, serious mass transit issues, energy issues, housing issues, disease, mass extinction and a whole range of issues that REQUIRE significant education, I think it’s imperative that any plan would have to articulate a) what does education look like, b) what does research look like, c) what do “companies” look like.

I say “companies” because not every organization is capable of being run by the “employee” of the month. Some enterprises are necessarily large and running them requires expertise. A steel mill, for example requires expertise. Even if the new system obviates a knowledge of labor negotiation, it still requires a thorough understanding of metallurgy, tool and dye operation, labor allocation, safety procedures, ecological issues, etc. You can’t just say, “okay. Today, Elroy is going to run the plant. Next week…lessee…yeah, the roster says it’s Janice’s turn. Okay. Let’s make some steel, everybody!” and then everybody goes off humming like it’s a cartoon.

Thus, while I agree on so many points about the pitfalls of capitalism, we are here in 2016 with over 7 billion people on the brink of Climate Catastrophe and in desperate need of significant technological innovation to perhaps save the biosphere. Decisions need to be made.

My experience is that groups make decisions slowly. They just do. And as we’ve seen in this latest election cycle, not everyone has the temperament, intellect or disposition to lead and putting them in that position is bad in every possible way.

I’m a heavy sleeper literally and politically and my awakening has been sloooooow. I’ve voted for the wrong guy in every election, I think…

Then again, when I met some of you in 1999, I was a social moderate, fiscal conservative Republican. Now?

I think it’s safe to say I’m a progressive because I think liberals are weak and a mess, whether they be corporatist DLC liberals or SJW liberals. Never met a liberal who could motivate me to do anything more than roll my eyes. It’s partly why as a moderate Republican as I drifted leftward that I didn’t remotely respond to liberalism. Ugh.

I’ve finally found an integrity in the Progressive movement that I feel comfortable with.

Which probably means as I vote for Jill Stein that Trump will win by 1 vote in Florida and it will be traced to me not voting the Dem ticket (stupid closed primaries).

Oh well…

I’m giggling a bit at this convo…

I love it. That and the notion that Hillary Clinton is or ever was on the Left or a Progressive… Hahahahaha.

I see where you’re going Billy T, but also understand the questions asked by bnw.

Even if the aims of a cooperative group aren’t capitalistic, structurally, not every endeavor is suited to totally flat organizational structure. I know in engineering, while it would probably be better for ideas to be democratized, there are moments when groups are incapable of making every decision. Sometimes a moment requires an expert. Others, it requires some ok to make a decision because it is inappropriate.

Moreover, humans are hard wired for a few things. We need other humans. We respond to base needs powerfully like air, food, water, sleep, evacuation and sex. Our brains respond dramatically to what we now call entrepreneurial pursuits. That’s pure brain chemistry and it’s been seen in scans.

I’m far from arguing for capitalism. However, I think any alternative has to acknowledge that most people aren’t altruistic. Most people are basically interested in survival and have both the capacity to be decent or horrible and that line is pretty slim (see Nazi Germany: after the war, many Germans said it was like waking up from a national nightmare and they always saw themselves as moral people, until…)

Any system must have an ability to control because criminals will always exist in any society.

So, how does this system deal with the barely engaged, the disabled (since they can’t build up credits with labor), criminals and situations where totally flat organizational structures aren’t feasible or entirely apropos?

Voter fraud is not real. Not in any way that matters.

You wanna know what is real? Ghost peppers. Those are real.

I think you might want to check the math on assumptions in your first sentence.

Yes, wealth is redistributed via taxation. However, the assumption in your post is downward.

It is not. Even in taking into account Social Programs…

Why do the wealthy stay in the US? It’s a really, REALLY important question.

Other countries have fantastic cuisine, people who speak English, great weather and all the services for wealthy people.

So…why stay?

Wealthy people stay in the US as well as wealthy people from around the world come here for extended stays or immigrate here because of what this country offers: police forces and judiciaries that are notoriously not corrupt. It is a scandal when one is found to BE corrupt. Constitutional and regulatory mechanisms such that their real property, assets and finances are protected from seizure without due process.

That’s fantastically important.

Because the narrative from these wealthy individuals who enjoy benefits that they cannot enjoy in places like Mexico, China or other places that generate Billionaires is that their resources are not nearly as secure at home.

The wealthy are trying to have all the benefits of being SAFE and having their WEALTH be SAFE while insisting that everyone else put their shoulders to the wheel.

Are their systemic issues, like local and state regulations? Yes. yes there are.

However, arguing for MORE brick and mortar entrepreneurship is like arguing for more Buggy whip makers. Brick and mortar retailing is dying much like print journalism and broadcast television.

Frankly, I’m FINE…absolutely FINE with having the super wealthy PAY and PAY handsomely for the safety and security that comes from being able to be a Billionaire and to walk safely on the street without a security team in the US. There are dozens of countries in the world that wouldn’t even be a laughable consideration.

Why? Because it costs LOTS of money to provide all of the conditions that allow for that; it costs tons for such a government and to maintain it. And we have a unique social outlook toward the rich that isn’t shared by other western nations.

So, frankly, I’m far less concerned with taxing the wealthy a graduated percentage because they get SO MUCH MORE, that it’s disgusting…and they can’t get it almost anywhere else save a few other nations.

Why should they have to pay more? Because they don’t have to worry about dealing with routine kidnapping like in SO MANY other nations or living in an armed compound or having to travel everywhere via armed caravan.

Why should they have to pay more? Because they don’t have to worry about being jailed in the middle of the night and have all of their assets seized for bogus charges validated by a corrupt judge.

Why should they have to pay more? Because they don’t have to worry about revolutionary forces bombing civilians or creating unrest and potentially killing them or family members as they go about their lives.

Why should they have to pay more? Because they don’t have to worry about their assets being in a completely government manipulated market that will crash in a moment and render them bankrupt.

ALL of these things exist today in other countries. They are very, very real.

There is a reason that the wealthy want to ingrain into the American Psyche that every single thing that needs to happen…well, it can be fixed with JOBS.

Well, a) which jobs because if we add 5 million more Starbucks Barristas to the economy, that’s not a good thing overall, b) the economy is already fantastically out of balance c) if the economy is best when it efficiently meets needs, then why aren’t we borrowing MASSIVE sums at near zero interest to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure including our INTERNET backbone and make FTTH (Fiber To The Home) a National Imperative and not just to bougie subdivisions like Verizon cherry-picked (I guess I got lucky mine got picked…and yeah, it’s pretty vanilla and suburban and bougie)?

I don’t disagree with all that you say, bnw. Rather, I see conflation. It seems to be a theme.

Of course, we need better jobs. And we need Single Payer so that employers can cut out this bullshit mass underemployment. I mean, the ONLY reason people aren’t fully employed is that employers don’t want to offer health insurance. THAT’S IT. They don’t care about things like 401(k)s and things like that. Nope. Some would even be willing to allow profit sharing and things like that. But NOT health insurance. That’s the ONE thing that’s a no go.

Single payer fixes ALL of that. It actually OPENS up jobs…AND it makes it EASIER to start a business because you don’t have to navigate the minefield that is the first hire. Payroll is hard enough, but health insurance? Gimme a break, that’s just nuts.

There are ways…some of them just fantastically easy…to fix this. And even hardcore conservatives agree… like Single Payer. And…single payer doesn’t stop innovation. I go to the VA and Germany has single payer healthcare…and most of the MRI and Cat-scan and PET-scan machines are made by Siemens, a German company. The VA isn’t buying the GE machines. I dunno why. Point is that innovation can come from single-payer economies. And currently DOES.

But just no on the wealthy paying the same as the rest of us. No. If they don’t like paying a lot more, let them go to Mexico and have to deal with the overhead of armed guards and armored vehicles and staffing a compound. Oh, wait… that’s why so many of the Mexican millionaires/billionaires come to the US… or they can go back to China and be at the whim of the Party Officials…or go back to Russia and hope to avoid Putin or the mob there…

You’re conflating voter fraud with a rigged election system.

No one on this forum will argue that having two private parties that privately select the candidates and privately create the rules by which they are elevated is ultimately in the best interest of our nation nor is it laughably democratic even as it is mostly open to “the people”.

Voter fraud is when one person casts an illegal ballot.

And in the last 30 years… Voter fraud just is NOT a thing.

Might it have been a thing in the 60s? I dunno. Maybe.

However, with gerrymandered districts, I’m not surprised that Obama would get 100% of the vote in certain districts. Not surprised at all.

That’s fixable NOT by shouting VOTER FRAUD and insisting that phantom people are cheating and disenfranchising millions of voters.

This is fixable by ending gerrymandering and creating heterogeneous districts that don’t look like viral DNA when looked at on a map.

Actual voter fraud is not a thing.

Instances are so rare as to be inconsequential.

Facts matter.

Bullshit voter ID laws disenfranchise millions of voters across the country every year.

Actual fraud has barely exceeded single digits for the entire nation for the past few decades. And even if it were a few hundred… Compared to the few billion ballots… I’d rather worry about the MILLIONS who were ACTUALLY disenfranchised than the maybe tens or hundreds who might have committed election fraud.

It’s called scale.

But is that stuff… The Right Stuff?

Sigh….

*in my best Ahnuld voice*…

It’s not a bahttuhl. Goff iz de vinnuh. Goff vill staht and zat iz de end of it. Fishah vas nevah going to let Keenum vin a bahttuhl mit Goff.

Plus, zere’s plenty of reason to give Fishah more time mit a rookie QB.

Truhst me. Goff vil staht from ze beginning!

Vy iz zis even a qvestion?

You know my take.

I don’t give us 50…And I got 4 kids, so that’s a particularly bleak outlook.

But as carbon approaches 500ppm and solar output begins to increase…yeah, it’s gonna really start to ramp up…and right quick.

Real estate prices are rebounding nicely here in FL and I’m actually thinking about moving.

I may wait a year or two if I can hold out that long, but beyond that? I dunno…

bnw wrote:

I think Trump will highlight Hillary’s negatives directly to the people since the liberal media won’t. The public views her as untrustworthy and Trump will ask the tough questions. Questions like why won’t she release the transcript of a speech to Goldman Sachs that she was paid $600,000 to give? What could she have possibly said that was worth that much money? Trump wants to take Wall Street to task. Hillary won’t. Trump wants to audit the Federal Reserve. Hillary won’t. Trump wants trade deals that work for the american worker. Hillary wants the secrecy of the TPP which based upon prior similar deals of NAFTA and GATT have given the american worker the shaft. Trump doesn’t want to antagonize Russia into conflict, rather he wants to offer Putin assistance in his fight against ISIS. Hillary wants war with Russia. Have barely scratched the surface yet but Trump’s positions will appeal to many working or wanting to work democrats as well as independents.

The only so called scary thing about Trump is all the familiar voices of the establishment of both parties that have fed heartily at the public trough through the nations undeniable decline are raised in unison against Trump. The people will realize that is because the establishment doesn’t own him and that is good.

The email scandal is a slam dunk as anyone that has worked with or in the federal government handling such documentation knows. Hillary escaping prosecution will be a boon to Trump since people are tired of watching public officials breaking the law with no consequences.

I think Trump is a LOT stronger than others think as well.

1) Hillary rarely goes UP in polls. That’s her history and it’s WELL known.

2) For all the GOP reticence, ultimately, they’ll prefer Trump to Hillary in the White House because as they’re already seeing, when he needs help (and he needs a lot of it), he’s going to come to SOMEONE for help. So, either help him and BE that help or don’t and be left out. I think they’ll help.

3) The GOP has been itching for this election…to blast Hillary with both barrels since she was First Lady. There’s just NO WAY they sit this out. They couldn’t go as negative or as nasty as they wanted to go with Rick Lazio because every time they’ve run against her, the candidate was a “respectable” Republican, whatever that means. Well, no problem with that this time!!! This time, they can send outside groups and use every weapon in the arsenal; nuclear, biological, chemical and engage in all forms of asymmetrical political warfare. This is the Lee Atwater/Karl Rove wing’s true wet dream come true. NOTHING is off the table because what can they say that Trump probably hasn’t already said? What can they do that would truly alienate Trump’s core voters?

4) Trump will use his position to hammer away at the same positions Bernie has, but from a far nastier stance. He’s already said “politicians are bought and paid for. I know…because I bought ’em!” Rest assured, if she’s the Democratic Candidate, he’ll ask for the transcripts and the Crooked Hillary tweets will be a thing.

5) Between Bernie taking the high road and Trump taking the low road, Hillary is going to be fighting a two front war until late July. That’s going to hurt. She can’t win on principle or nasty. And just repeating her inevitability isn’t inspiring to anyone other than her tribe. It certainly didn’t inspire Indiana independents, who went for Bernie by over 40pts.

Just like Kerry was the better candidate who got Swiftboated… This is the election they’ve been waiting for and Trump is the only kind of candidate that allows them to be as unfettered as they’ve always wanted to be.

Moreover, I expect this election to be so toxic, they’ll describe it as Chernobyl with record low turnout.

Who’s that favor? Trump.

And come October, I expect we’ll see the GOP ground game really start to ramp up with tons of anti-Hillary stuff happen.

Anyone remember McConnell’s smug look after the 2008 election and everyone wonder’d “hey, he just got his ass kicked, why’s he looking so smug? Well, he had a pretty racist plan to obstruct everything, blame it on the black president and simply sweep not only the house and senate, but state houses across the south and midwest and not only own the entire congress, but have the infrastructure to gerrymander more than half the country for a generation. For ONE election? Yeah, it was worth it to them. Some states will be Republican for a decade or more after it’s clearly a Democratic state due to gerrymandered districts.

Now… really look. REALLY look. All that Trump upset.

It died down AWFUL QUICK, didn’t it?

I expect any resistance now is token while they work to get the plans in place.

I really don’t expect Hillary will win because she’s not going to appeal to millennials or Bernie voters. She truly in a remarkable bit of candor expects them, including independents, to come to her. That’s the way it’s been and it’s her turn and she’s entitled to it…is her way of thinking.

I think between actual progressives going with Jill Stein or staying home, with millennials likely staying home in droves because the negativity will be just off the scale toxic, suppressed voter turnout and inroads with white working class and even, surprisingly, Hispanic voters and Black voters (That Trump is around 10% is very bad for Hillary, number wise), it points to Trump actually being able to win.

He puts a number of states in play and while very blue states and very red states may vote bluer and redder, the rust belt may hurt Hillary where Trump got more votes than she did. And she lost West Virginia which should be a blue state. It won’t be this year for her.

I think politics is pornography for polite society. I don’t like it, mostly because of how disingenuously politics is talked about…like when describing “politicking”, we’re not describing going to war and young Americans dying or cutting a program and Americans going hungry, etc.

That said, I still understand it and the politics of this isn’t all that hard to see and understand once we get outside of the beltway, tribal, party dynamic.

It’s really simple. Trump is “the Disruptor”, to borrow the Bushism. Moreover, he creates a terrible synergy with the Republican dirty tricks machine, the likes of which we may never see again in our Nation’s history (maybe explicitly because of what we’re about to see).

The answer is the other disruptor. That would be Bernie.

However, that’s not going to happen because of the tribalism and personal political ambitions rampant within the current party system.

So, when we see Trump on the steps of Congress… remember, it’s because it was Hillary’s turn. And it’s everyone’s fault for not sticking with the script that Hillary was “anointed”. At least, that will be the Dem narrative. It won’t be “we shoulda gone with Bernie”.

He had Roddy White, came from a pro style offense, threw on only 40% of plays, many on play action and he played in a weak NFC South.

That enabled such a turnaround.

We have no Roddy White, Goff doesn’t come from a pro style offense so as such he’ll have the language issues to deal with which take time beyond the physical, he won’t be nearly as shielded as Ryan with 60% run and then a number of passes out of play action meaning the percentage of pure passes defenced was something around 25%. That’s extraordinarily low. And we have the third toughest schedule in the NFL playing in the NFC West and playing NE, Carolina and even the teams with losing records last season like Tampa Bay look MUCH better this year.

Goff does not compare to the situations of Ryan, Flacco, or Roethlisberger. I can’t find a similar situation where a QB was drafted and faced this difficult a schedule with such uncertainty at the WR and TE positions and was successful his first year.

This is gonna take time.

That circular logic is sumthin’ aint it?

One can only hope she’s indicted prior to the convention or better yet, Anonymous actually gets to her proper.

I shake my head how she says that 30 THOUSAND emails were mostly between her and her husband and her husband just recently admitted to only ever having sent TWO emails, he said what one was and it wasn’t a private email to his wife. So, who were the 30,000 emails to???

Cenk Uygur was saying that if James Comey really wanted to screw Hillary, he’d indict her on the last day of the convention… After everyone finally either made peace with Hillary or walked away…BOOM. No post convention bounce…

Course, that presumes the wheels don’t come off between now and July with Trump fighting dirty on one side, the RNC and all that money taking basically free shots on a second side because there’s a whole conservative #neverHillary deal that’s not down with Trump either. And then there’s Bernie slamming her from the left…totally on point on policy.

She can’t be more of an asshole than Trump and she can’t be more of s genuine populist than Bernie.

Fisher leaked through Mike Silver that they are also entertaining trade offers for Keenum.

Wish I was kidding…