What kind of system sanctions this?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/goldman-bankers-get-rich-betting-on-food-prices-as-millions-starve-8459207.html

Squeers

Thanks for the thoughtful comments. I agree that capitalism has produced (most of) 7 billion humans, but that doesn't mean we'll all perish if the system itself ends or is transformed. Food can be produced for large numbers other than on vast industrial monocultures, for example. Have a look at this PhD on the way Russia's population fed itself when the Soviet system collapsed: www.soilandhealth.org/01aglibrary/010177.sharashkin.pdf.

And it's worth remembering that capitalism doesn't entirely determine the life conditions of everyone, everywhere.

Powerful countries as they are presently politically structured clearly won't embark on transforming capitalism, for the reasons discussed in Streeck's article. But changes are possible in the power formations within countries, and through democratic means, e.g.Venezuela, ruled by a pro-neoliberal oligarchy for decades, elected Chavez in 1998. Whatever else you might say or think of him, he's no neoliberal, and he's been very popular amongst a strong majority of Venezuelans for the past 15 years. Similar processes have taken place in Ecuador and Bolivia.

Look forward to your further thoughts when you finish the doco, and in the meantime here's another book that looks like a good read: http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/book-of-the-day-why-small-scale-alternatives-wont-change-the-world/2013/01/29

.

Dear Squeers,

.

You certainly covered a lot of ground in your last post. I am not as nimble as I used to be and am afraid you have left me way behind.

My concept of plain, ordinary faith is fairly basic compared to yours which strikes me as much more high-tech.

I see faith as something quite simple like confidence or trust, an essential feature of life, an instinct. Without faith the young fledgling would never dare break open the egg and venture into the world. The scientist could make no progress.

During my professional life I became familiar with the expression " uberrima fides", utmost good faith, a legal doctrine whereby all parties to an insurance contract must deal in good faith.

The opposing legal doctrine is "caveat emptor", let the buyer beware, the basis of all other contracts.

Not surprisingly, many of the convictions expressed on this Online Opinion forum are faith based rather than fact based.

I wonder to what extent your flight to faith (as you conceive it) is not due to the fact that materialism is tainted by its vernacular sense of disinterest in or rejection of spiritual, intellectual, and cultural values, assimilating it to philistinism (my home turf).

Materialism in this sense is far too reductionist and a distortion of the original sense of the term which I understand derived from mother.

The untainted, should I say, less pejorative, version of materialism is simply the recognition that " the physical world is all that exists ". In this version the mind, thoughts, ideas and sensorial perceptions are all part of the physical world. I see no reason for materialism to exclude interest in intellectual or cultural pursuits, or even the aspiration of a reality surpassing normal (state of the art) human understanding or experience.

I see no reason why dreams should not be as much a reality for materialists as for spiritualists. Both have a psyche and are equally capable of symbolisation and imagination.

"What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind. What is the soul? That is immaterial".

.

It's sad really, the way this thread has ended up in a dry, intellectual and spiritual gulch.

And while we have been discussing things, those who run the world, the billionaires, politicians and corporations, assisted by the likes of SM, have been entrenching themselves even more.

The Parasites and Predators who run this world know that academic discussions inevitably end up in a dead end and intellectuals end up playing word games and semantic naughts and crosses.

I suppose that's why Professors are not running the world and why people like Eisenstein become marginalized!

David G,

I suppose it all stems from the fact that homo sapiens, for all his intellectual and ideological rigor, is an avaricious and belligerent species who likes to amass "stuff".

The more stuff he collects, the more his ego is satiated - the more he considers his efforts a "success".

That's what capitalism satisfies - and it's very difficult to rationally override such a penchant.

It's only the arrival at a tipping point that will rein him in.

Poirot, you said, "...for all his intellectual and ideological rigor,..." Did you not mean rigor mortis?

Be assured I agree with the thrust of your comment. :)