Although I disagree with the main premise in the two articles and I think that articles like this do significant damage to achieving sustainability, Online Opinion should be applauded for publishing ideas that are so far outside the mainstream. It gives me faith that we live in a free society.

The issue that socialists never seem to address is that when socialists take over all the socailist leaders will be "good" and really look after the needs of the people. Even though we have seen that doesn't happen (Hello Stalin), somehow socialists don't recognise that one of their own could be "bad." Capitalists, to their credit, have recognised some of their own can be "bad" and have developed systems of government with checks and balances.

The reason I say that articles like this do damage to becoming sustainable is that when I recommend policies that would lead us to being more sustainable, those in opposition just say, "That is just more socialist hogwash. That is just the thin edge of the wedge until we are all living in a totalitarian regime." Policies such as a carbon tax to replace some of the income tax or setting aside more public land for "ecosystem services" rather than grazing and logging would harm developers who are counting on using those resources, but they wouldn't stop capitalism.

Hopefully in a free society we will be used to assessing all sides of the debates and sorting out the things that are best.

ericc is probably the most calmly expressed Malthusian fruitcake that I've ever read on OLO. He just keeps mouthideceptive quips about any and all forms of development being only a means for "the rich getting richer", but then "I'm no socialist"! Pity too that he misses how fart taxes (the "carbon" term is a revealingly silly misnomer) and "ecosystem services" are just another source of speculation for the parasitic to get more bloated and dependent on our workers' blood.

It is an unredeemable - indeed unsustainable - insult to humanity in general, and humans in Australia particularly, to persist in the blanket and unsubstantiated claims of such a fanatical dogma as that blinkered and dishonest Malthusian claptrap. This country's population has survived with little problem against its supply of procured and traded resources, despite the long-term degradation to actual production and infrastructure, and the characteristically western, post-contraceptive-pill demographic imbalance that has forced more and more younger locals and (more belatedly) migrants into the direct task of feeding baby boomers and older.

That we have survived such irresponsible, negligent and corrupt government is remarkable enough. It is worth remembering that we have done so within a largely fictitious and fraudulent economy, increasingly removed from true notions of productive "growth", to the point where "consumer spending" and other monetarist indices count towards that definition!

Nonetheless, our survival against such fraud and neglect should be a source of hope for just how great the country can become again when returned to a protective and truly productive regime based on proven principles - not on the imperialist quackery of eugenics and associated anti-human dogma borne of parasitic oligarchics' own in-breeding, aggressive sponsorship of their own mediocrity, and other degeneracy.

As OUG and wobbles suggest, the eugenicist snobs reveal more about themselves with their quackery. The parasitic are indeed "unsustainable" in a moral sense. However, we workers must not succumb to the temptation of applying the same nastiness to bring about their demise; there's no need to, provided the system returns to responsible and moral governance.

Hard to know where to begin refuting such a jumble of fallacies.

All you have said is based on ideas that were disproved in theory over a hundred years ago.

However socialists, not content with the disproofs in theory, went right ahead anyway and, at a cost of over a hundred million deaths, produced all the disproofs in practice that anyone could ever want.

To start with, the problems that come from the use of natural resources to support modern human life are going to afflict any other social system, so long as it supports the same amount of human life to the same standard. The problem you have is with human life, not capitalism. Obviously if you kill off large numbers of people either directly, or through starvation caused by banning productive activities, this will preserve the environment – at a cost in human deaths. But none of that is an argument against capitalism.

The labour theory of value does not explain the price of something: the theory of marginal utility does. If you pay someone $40,000 for a year to make a wheelbarrow, the value of the wheelbarrow is what someone will pay you for it, not $40,000. This means Marx’s central tenet was wrong.

Also, Marx got to volume three of Capital and stopped at the chapter where he was supposed to define class. His whole theory depended on it. Yet thirty-five years later he died without finishing it. The reason is because, once you think about it, the theory cannot withstand critical scrutiny. For example, a worker who has superannuation is a capitalist in his capacity as a shareholder. So is he a member of the ruling class, or the ruled class? Marx’s theory is demonstrably wrong. It is nonsense.

The only theory of class struggle that has real explaining power in modern western society is the struggle between the class of those whose work or savings goes to produce all the wealth the re-distributionists want to plunder, and the class of tax-consumers, the objects of government’s handouts and privileges.

when the socialists collapsed the'shares'were dispersed[creating tempory capitalists]now capitalism is collapsed we get our dividend [essentially a fractional tax refund[for some,but not the dole bludgers]anyhow go out and buy food with it while you can afford it,because the plan is hyper/inflation[the only way to'clear'fiat debt[that creates the debt but not the intrest to repay it]

[thus it ONLY cure is hyperinflation and this ressesion[we have to have]and will shortly get,their[capitalists]only cure for debt is create a bigger debt[then get'too_big'to fail]but the capitalists cure is more credit for themfrom govt coorperate welfare]then hyper inflation for US

CAPITALISM needs a new[cascow]tax[but how can we get this new global tax be sold to the serfs?fear;global warming[or is it global cooling]

regardless its the tax the capitalists need us to have thus we will get it,and then get yet more via hyperinflation[ie by deflating what money can buy] capitalism dont you love it[if you own the bank you do what you like to who you dis like]the rest[your mates]get credit and the serfs get all the blame

go spend[then in june you get blamed]or dont spend and watch it hyper inflate away

so what we do is what they do[fix your intrest,before june]cause by next xmass capitalisms delusions wil be clear to all[blood in the streets by 2010?

the poor will be eating the rich by then[better we buy food now
when capitalists get their new tax[oh who cares do as you chose
just remember capitalists got more to lose]or is it nothing left to lose?

sleep sheeple sleep govt will feed you poisen[soon even their fiat deception,s cant grow any more food]

dont say you didnt know,when we hit the streets the cull begins[but they cant take your home[because they sold off the mortgauge doicument they MUST present[the origonal]not a copy to reposess ya home[if you got no address they cant take/find your car]

what is they new ism?
sceptisism

enjoy the game[they sure are [be they the social;lists,or the mark-cysts or the DAS-capital-ists]the neo-[neo means new]-con zionist banker capa-till-lists,ursury is morally corrupt

so is car-bon?tax
[bon is good ; nyet com-rad?]