Dear Peter Hume,

First apropos your three strikes:

Strike 1: It was not bad faith or mind-reading; you did cast me as a bogey-man "anti-capitalist", as well as accuse me/my thought of "criminal stupidity" and as comparable to a "religious adherent". I accept your apology.
Marx's writing is mostly tedious, apart from his manifesto a rhetorical device by definition.

Strike 2: Since I've been at pains throughout to disclaim a knee-jerk penchant for socialism, its insistent attribution to my motives does strike me as hysterical. Besides, tit for tat.
"if there’s no alternative [to unsustainable and unethical capitalism], what is the relevance in practice?"
I didn't say there was "no" alternative; I indicated that I didn't have one.
Apropos my "circularity". I have established my "theoretical" stance and provided secondary sources (as have others). Since we're talking theory it cannot be finally established. I am persuaded that the empirical, logical and corroborative evidence.

Strike three: not a "personal insult", but a reciprocal complaint relating to your own insults and bad faith.
"It’s not enough to *disagree* with my arguments; you need to be able to *refute* them." I'm not aware that you've offered any "argument" as yet? Only denial and what I "in good faith" see as "cynicism".
On your next point; if you care to read my posts above, I acknowledge that capitalism is possibly the only system capable of sustaining current levels of population, although via wretched inequities. This does not alter the fact that it's unsustainable--like making yourself as comfortable as possible on the Titanic.

b) I do not rashly make proposals for alternatives to capitalism out of consideration of the complexity of the problem, but I'm not suffering from millenarian angst. Curiously there are a great many other people who share my "opinion" and are looking at viable alternatives. I shall think it over too in my humble way.
c) Again, I don't say there is no alternative. I actually say above that "humans are fundamentally ethical beings", by which I mean that ethical considerations modify our behaviour. Why must human ethics have relevance and purpose beyond human society? Points c) and d) are in fact the same straw man (no offence).
e) I don't buy that because unlike locust swarms, humans are potentially capable of reproductive restraint, foresight, economy and husbandry--as well as empathy to go with their ethics.
f) Again, I do not say there "is" no alternative. Indeed I've no doubt there is, and that it could be based on those qualities just mentioned above.
g) Consumer demand is utterly disproportionate and unsustainable on the scale and model of growth it currently follows. "This just is". Compromises have to be made. Please see the link to the Deakin Lecture posted by TBC above.
h) Agreed; alternatives have to consider the human cost. Although the current system doesn't consider the human (and other species) cost of exploitative practices.
i) and j) I'll look at these more closely when I have the time, but at a glance, it looks like circular logic to me.
k) "peaceful exchange based on private property" is pure myth by and large. We live in a competitive system based on escalating self-interest; that is, on the "profit motive" rather than on adequate sufficiency. To the extent that peaceful exchange is carried out, it is unethical in terms of gross inequalities, exploitation and subjugation.

Yabby... I'll leave you and Grim to slog it out over the Windows chap.

My simple view is that if he has gathered up so much wealth from his ubiquious product then he charges far too much for it, so can quite easily afford to horde and dispense it at whim.

Not knowing how the US tax system works I cannot offer a meaningful comment, but like most wealthy people/corporations, I have no doubt he pays very little tax compared to the gross income.

Maybe he does, and is a striking exception, but I doubt it.

As for bike riding, indeed, my own efforts are miniscule and in isolation totally meaningless to anyone but me and the immediate situation here, I am not 'changing the world' by any stretch of the imagination.

However, there are strange benefits that come with cycling, although not to everyone of course.

Since I am not a totally dedicated cyclist, still owning and driving a car, I have found a change in my attitude to the roadway.

Cycling is a more human pace than driving, and the ease with which miles are vanquished on a bike is quite a shock. The need for a car reduces considerably. I've got a trailer for shopping at Woolies, and at the fruit/veggie shop.

Not to be 'pure' but because it's easy, and quite pleasant.

The urge to rush everywhere dissipates even in the car, a calmer life descends as a result of cycling.

Now, road rage is a booming 'industry', and is very evident on a bike, but even more so when driving the car, as really bad driving becomes even more evident once the road has been re-interpreted from the saddle.

This was an unexpected result from getting back on the bike.

Yabby 2
If more people cycled in Australia, not clad in lycra and head down, although even that helps to increase numbers, then our roads would become far safer as the very poor driving attitudes and practices melted away.

As for you being an 'evil capitalist', don't take it like that. We are all in this together, we are all, by default, 'evil capitalists', as 'guilty' of mad and endless consumption as each other.

I have a stable of bikes, all of steel, probably from WA, shipped to China, turned into steel, shipped back again, transported by trucks all over the nation-state, and flogged at horrendous mark ups in bike shops, the new fashion houses of the middle class.

Hardly a sustainable circle of virtue is it?

My German tyres are made in Indonesia, shipped to the UK, bought by me, flown to Australia.... for a mere $27 each!

Again, not sustainable but with our neo-liberal system of capitalism is was decided that Australia would not have a tyre industry (along with many others), so all are imported, for every vehicle in the land.

In fact, we don't even have a bike industry anymore, beyond a handful of cottage frame builders.

The system of capitalism that we have, as exemplified by my bike owning/riding, is not possible to keep going for ever. As Tim Jackson points out in that info I posted that clearly Squeers has read.

Now, for Sterns benefit, I didn't once hear Jackson suggesting a fall-back position of Communism, but he did suggest that change, considerable change, has to overcome the Capitalist system we currently endure, as Squeers has been suggesting.

I wonder if Squeers rides a bike too?

Dear TBC,
I do indeed ride a bicycle too; I have two very inexpensive machines and use them as much as is practical.
I was very interested, listening to the In the National Interest link you provided, in the discussion about what can only be called "commodity fetishism", and in particular the phenomenon of commodity status and competitiveness we're all seduced by. Apart from the risk to life and limb associated with cycling, the greatest disincentive is the perceived pecking order in which you find yourself: bottom feeder. Cyclists are perceptually impoverished, dis-empowered and bullied (and/or despised for being "green", that is for giving a sh!t about their ecological footprint. How hateful of them!). This perception is certainly directed at cyclists, but I think we also buy into it ourselves somewhat, since we are part of a culture that measures success according to material possessions and accoutrements. Much as we might brag that we don't care what how peers think, we are part of the same society and "do". In a sense it is not the fault of people like Col Rouge (God rest his soul. Loved your reincarnation crack, Grim! Could it be true?) that they are arrogant and completely unselfreflective about their "worth"; after all they have the material holdings deemed by consumer society as indicative of success. They may justifiably (if simplistically)regard their "success" as human beings as an "objective" assessment. And much as I tell myself that success is (or should be) measured by much less tangible matters than the car you drive, and all the other accoutrements of success, as part of the same culture I can't help but absorb to some degree my complementary "failure", taken by the same measure. It isn't so much that I am taken in by this materialist yardstick, it's that almost everyone else is, and that they do the measuring regardless of how much I assert my values.
As was alluded on ITNI, there is something patently absurd (and demeaning) about those "eccentric" individuals who do try to lead a non-materialistic, sustainable and humble lifestyle. How cock-eyed is that!

I haven't really been following this rather entertaining thread, but Squeers' last post caused me to go back and look at it.

I do believe Grim's right - welcome back Col!