You're very wise Alchemist. It is obvious to me that most western countries - as clients of the US have to gear their economies to ensuring the US remains the dominant economic powerhouse. It’s sort of feudal. The country with the cheapest goods can have so because the rest pay more - it’s like we are subtly paying taxes to the US.

Threads always seem to start with differing and often down right opposing opinions. This fuels debate - but it does seem that eventually - most reasonable people start to coalesce around the most reasonable points of view - hence why I believe commonsense eventually prevails. Extreme views may seem reasonable at the outset - but eventually, they sit exposed amongst the reasonable postings of the majority who wish to get on and create a better world for all. As more people become involved - this can only become even more obvious. In my experience - the vast majority of people I meet are fairly reasonable minded.

Kevin: I guess we'll have to agree to disagree because I don't believe the internet will ultimately be the liberating force you believe it to be. Ultimately, human nature remains the same, and so technology or anything else gets used the same.

The alchemist: I'm not disagreeing with you as such, but I think we need to try to stand outside ourselves for a second and look at the wider picture of history, even if our own situation seems very pressing. There have been other times when societies have been very up the creek and they probably thought everything was going to hell in a hand basket (look at all the post-apocalyptic, nuclear winter scenarios in popular culture in the early 80s). However, in the end, civilisation survived and/or rebuilt itself. I take a cyclical and cynical view. Of course, it won't go on forever. At the very least, one day, our sun will die. I think we're a long way from the end of the game though.

Alchemist - this may be of interest to you....

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jay_rosen/2006/09/post_394.html

Shorbe, history can't gauge the outcome of our present crisis, for the following reasons. Until the turn of the 20th century, conflict and political globalisation didn't exist. Problems were localised as were politics, now no matter what we may like to think, everything is globalised. In the political world what happens overseas effects us because they've put political control in economics, not the future.

Common sense won't prevail this time, as the people of the world have no say in what's happening, it's the politicians and their economic masters. There was a time in the 80's, when we were less than 3 minutes away from nuclear war. It was only the common sense of Russian and US presidents of the time that stopped it, both were about to launch, after computer malfunctions in their systems. It didn't happen, but it was very close. We may not be in for a nuclear winter, but we're in for many other scenario's we can't stop, that may be much worse.

Kevin yes that's a good article and the way it will go, the results of the flow of information on OLO. is a good example. We must change our political nature, with an election soon, none of them has a clue except, give more to their mates and give us less at higher costs. How far can we go in shipping manufacturing and jobs overseas, or importing people to work for less.

Open source politics is the next step, or its collapse. Our present system only represents the elite and their grab for more power. Unlike the past this is a world problem, not a community or country one. For this country, one more year of this drought may bring the country to it's knees. Water and energy consumption is increasing, with out any alternative approaches being introduced to reverse it. Only one outcome from that and it's not nice for the 97% of the population who rely totally on the system for everything.