Considering that as industry becomes more automated, employment shifts to the service industry where face to face service is more desirable.

Bastani is an optimistic idiot like most left whingers.

As American economist Thomas Sowell put it, “One of the most important reasons for studying history is that virtually every stupid idea that is in vogue today has been tried before and proved disastrous before, time and again.”

What McMullen fails to explain is why Bastani thinks it's desirable, when we reach the fully automated luxury stage, to have communism rather than the kind of mixed economy we have today.

Bastani's anti-green bias is also very strongly evident, implying greens are anti-technology or believe Gaia is God, when in reality those are very much minority viewpoints among the green movement. Worse still, he's failed to notice that renewables are already a cheaper way of generating electricity than fossil fuels. He obsesses over the current cost of hydrogen storage, and notes that it's not a mature technology (a fact which DESTROYS his argument against it, though he seems to think it strengthens it). He also ignores the potential of demand management.

I don't ever recall seeing, in a non-exemplary context, a view where the bias so overwhelmingly determines the content.

Communism came of age when we and other nations dismantled it in favour of far more rational and incentivising, private enterprise.

The best of which and demonstrably so, cooperative capitalism!

Cooperative capitalism is the best form of shared capitalism and makes those that own the store or factory, the ones who work in it and profit from it.

As opposed to communism which like Animal Farm puts entirely unproductive pigs in charge and requires a component of slave labour (reeducation camps) and the quite blatant theft of intellectual property to survive!

Simply put, communism has absolutely nothing going or it except for your lazy bludger or thief, or power junkie, who wouldn't work in an iron lung! NOTHING, NOT A SINGLE THING GOING FOR IT OR THEM!

Only those identified above, espouse or advocate for on behalf of fundamentally flawed, cruel beyond comparison, SOMETHING FOR NOTHING (soulless, Godless) communism!
Alan B.

True that "Communism is not some utopia that could have happened any old time." but not in the way the author hopes.

Communism is a hypocritical hell, ruled by rich Party aristocrats, and only appreciated by those who have lived in Communist countries. The people of the Soviet Union and communist satellites long realised Communism's murderous hypocracy and finally freed themselves on the way to democracy in 1989-1992.

Meanwhile the deluded Communist Enthusiasts (often of the UK Fabian and also Leninist Left) enjoy the freedom of living in Western countries. Yet they still carry a Grass Is Greener in Red Countries delusion.
__________________________________________________

CASE STUDY of a Notable Communist Enthusiast.

How [George Bernard] Shaw defended Stalin's mass killings http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1433323/How-Shaw-defended-Stalins-mass-killings.html

"Stalin's show trials which led to the deaths of millions of people in the Soviet Union during the 1930s were strongly defended by the British author and playwright George Bernard Shaw.

An extraordinary document to be auctioned at Sotheby's in London next month reveals that Shaw continued to defend the Russian leader's excesses [providing] a shocking insight into the naivety of Soviet sympathisers among the British intelligentsia.

Senior communists were arrested after the murder of Sergei Kirov, the Leningrad party chief, in December 1934 and within two months almost 200 had been shot. Tens of thousands of lesser-known people were sent to Siberia although Kirov is thought to have been been killed on Stalin's orders.

...Asked whether he believed that the revolution had "attracted degenerate types", Shaw replied: "On the contrary it has attracted superior types all the world over to an extraordinary extent wherever it has been understood."

...At least 720,000 people were executed in the terror that followed. Millions more died from hunger and ill-treatment in concentration camps."

Hi Ttbn,

That's worth repeating:

"“One of the most important reasons for studying history is that virtually every stupid idea that is in vogue today has been tried before and proved disastrous before, time and again.”"

My parents were communists, from the 1930s, the only working-class members of a branch in a working-class area. Obviously, most people there had enough sense to stay away. It took me forty-odd years to realise that it was a crock.

There seems to be a half-witted turn towards all of the certainties and 'stabilities' of authoritarianism and totalitarianism, almost a turn back to the 'perfections' of the thought-basis of the Middle Ages - even further back: Bruce Pascoe in 'Dark Emu' has declared that Aboriginal society 120,000 years ago (i.e. about 40,000 years before their ancestors left Africa) was a caring, sharing, united society - in fact, the first society in the world, building - for no apparent reason - the first city in the world. Don't worry about evidence, just feel the yearning.

Democracy is a vital, living, imperfect system, but every other type of society seems to have degenerated into either stagnation (viz. Muslim societies) or various forms of fascism (viz. China). Witnessing the attempts to restore democracy in places like Sudan, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Burma, Turkey, Hong Kong, one despairs that anti-democratic societies are incredibly difficult to change, in order to restore or initiate democratic systems. Strikingly, those societies tend not to have much of the organisation and fostering of civil societies, community groups, voluntary groups, discussion groups, etc.

Democracy thus

[TBC]

[continued]

takes a lot of work to bring about and maintain. Corruption, incompetence and venal ambition can cripple democratic systems. What is very worrying is that many younger people - those with 'no history' - would rather have stability than the sometimes-ferment of democratic politics, in an infantile craving for certainty and control rather than have the courage to participate in the to and fro of healthy political activity.

Not helping is the recent push by Jesuits towards some sort of synthesis with communism: is it Middle-Ages-type certainty, even at the cost of 'bourgeois' freedoms, that they crave ? Or are many young people afraid of the uncertainties of a changing world ? Do they demand nothing less than perfection and its supposed 'closure' of any uncertain issues ? That they don't want to have to think about anything difficult ? Is there, indeed, a sort of comfortable (for some), luxury-age fascism that many people would prefer to the difficulties and openness of democracy ? Are we on the 'road to serfdom' (Hayek) and the suppression of any move towards an 'open society' (Popper) ?

Are we moving towards a gutless society that would rather be castrated in comfort than stimulated by new and dangerous ideas ?

Joe

Anyone who thinks the price of Lithium batteries is about to reduce, must be living on a pink cloud in fairy land.

I use LiPo batteries in my remote controlled planes. A popular size for the planes I fly is a 2200MaH 3 cell LiPo. As recently as 2.5 years ago I was buying them from a popular on line hobby shop for between $5.50 & $10.00. Just yesterday I received a promotion email from them offering the same battery on special for $22.00.

On this planet, where most of us live, it is very hard to see that as a price reduction.

Hasbeen, it's likely the price of batterie will fall when batteries based on cheap elements (sodium, aluminium, iron etc) are developed. And when that happens, the price of lithium batteries is also likely to fall as demand for them in non-transport uses will become much lower.

That has been going to happen for at least 20 years Aidan.

Pardon me if I don't hold my breath waiting for which century such a dream will come to pass.

I've just picked up an error. In the third paragraph of the "Renewable Folly" section, US$180 billion should be US$136 billion. Sorry about that.

When Joseph Goebbels died he arrived in heaven.
There he saw, everyone was reading scripture and uninterested in anything else. They did not even need to eat or sleep, only study, study and study for eternity.

So Goebbels, who was bored to his teeth, pleaded with St. Peter: "if this is heaven, can you then please take me to hell?". Finally St. Peter conceded to allow him in hell, but just for one night. The elevator went down, down, down in what seemed to be eternity, but eventually it stopped, the door opened and Goebbels saw the residents of hell all partying, drinking, making merry, yet the night quickly passed and he was sent back to heaven.

Again Goebbels pleaded, "please send me to hell again", but St. Peter told him: "do you know how much this elevator-ride costed us the other night? we could never afford another such 2-way ride", so Goebbels replied: "I do not need a 2-way ride, just take me down and I will stay there forever". "Are you sure?", asked Peter, "Will you promise never to come back". "Absolutely sure, sure as hell", replied Goebbels. "Very well then", said St. Peter.

Down came the elevator, down, down and down. Finally the door opened and Goebbels was faced with lashes of fire and brimstone, dark angels torturing him in the most painful ways. "But, but, I was sent to hell, cried Goebbels, where are all the parties? where is all the fun?".

"This", answered the angels, "is for tourists only!"

---

So far, much more than technology serves us, we are made servants of technology.

This fully automated luxury may, one day, come. But not in my lifetime and probably not that of anyone currently alive.

But why would such a system be communist? A system of government and a system of economic control that utterly failed to improve the lot of those poor souls who fell under its tender mercies, was only a hindrance on the road to this utopia.

Such a system, if it came about, only has a chance of doing so under capitalism.

So why not call it post-capitalism? Such a system is the ultimate destination of capitalism just as the gulag is the ultimate destination of communism.

I think it was Assimov (don't hold me to that) who wrote about a world where mankind had learned to manipulate matter at an atomic level and at an acceptable cost. He fantasised about every home having a device where whatever you wanted could be created by simply rearranging atoms. Put enough waste material in and then have the atoms rearranged to make whatever you want. A 3D printer on steroids. The point of his discussion was to examine a society where the overriding issues was no longer how to distribute scarce resources.

None of our current systems would be appropriate to such a world. And entirely new understand of society and the human adventure would need to be invented. But it will only come about due to the victory of capitalism.

If value from human work is zero then resources can be allocated without cost. Minerals are mined , processed into machines and deliver products ( bread , meat, CDs , ambulance and virtual doc) to your door, free . Gold toilet seats as Lenin wanted (no good in Russian winters). US can take out China and Iran by nuke program, recalled at the last minute and feel great again. All pollies are honest, police are CCTV drone law-enforced enforcers and program-writers are deleted as they become corrupted.