Potentially actionable ad hominemism.

A communist needs to alert the populace to the dangers of the Nazi's taking over.

In Australia people often use the term "Left" as a
shorthand for the Labor Party and the term "Right"
as a shorthand for the Liberal Party. Center politics
favour moderate positions. People like myself holding
these views are often called "moderates". Political
independents often fall at the center of the political
spectrum.

But we need to
keep in mind that politics is always far more complicated
then the labels we give it - and each other.

Best not to let things get all ... upside down, no?

There's an interesting article by David Spitz in "The
Antioch Review," V. 9 No. 4, 1949 pp. 495-508 (14 pages).
"Why communists are not of the Left."

In which he says - "One of the depressing facts of history
is the tenacity with which some men cling to labels long
after the meaning has changed. The liberalism of John
Stuart Mill is not that of Bertrand Russell. The communism of
Karl Marx is in important respects different from that of Stalin."

"Yet a proclivity of these men for loose thinking and heated
argument leads them to blur the distinction for the sake of
common identification."

"This is bad logic and bad history. It also ensures bad results."

Canem,
Geoinfomatics is seldom maths heavy any more. It used to be, but software products from ESRI (ArcInfo, ArcView, ArcMap and finally ArcGIS) have automated the tasks and made it far easier. Tasks that were once considered PhD worthy (requiring lots of calculations then manual production of graphics with Letrasets) suddenly became doable in an afternoon, and a few people got their degrees really easily before their assessors realised. I think this was shortly before ScoMo got his degree, though I'm not sure as I don't know which ESRI package was the revolutionary one.

Marx was a prominent economist who (despite his own perverse conclusions stemming from his overreliance on the Labour Theory of Value) developed new ways of viewing things which economic geographers would be remiss to ignore.

>The world doesn't have an energy problem
It doesn't just have one energy problem, it has many.

>- it has an energy storage problem.
It has some energy storage problems; solving these is insufficient to solve all the energy problems. But the problems are solvable.

>The Left obviously have an effective propaganda campaign and electioneering system
I think the Right does to a far greater extent. But it is starting to collapse. People have started to see though the lies that the Right are better economic managers. And indeed to see through the claims that small government leads to efficiency rather than false economies, and that the best things the government can do for the economy are to cut taxes and get out of the way.

But very few on the Right still believe the disinformation that the Left are still adoringly following Marx!

Hi Aidan,

As always - Well said!

Aiden's comments on Geoinformatics/ Economic Geography sound very "missing man" to me- most computer modelling requires some level of interpretation- anyway make your own judgement.

As for Marx being a prominent Economist- my understanding is that he's a bit out of the economics main stream- though you'd have to read the three volumes of Das Capital to know (about 3000 dense 7"x10" pages)- and Marx's Rate Of Exploitation seems to be related in some way to the Law of Diminishing Returns- but I'm not an expert. Marx’s Labour Theory of Value is also interesting seemingly assumes that prices are set by communist mystics.

It seems to me that many ideas and propaganda points used on the left are concurrent with those used by the communist diaspora- I remember the poster of Communism used by Mao- with Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao lined up like a Hollywood movie. Trotsky and Herbert Marcuse (Originally Frankfurt school Gay Hebrew Psychologist) perhaps should have been included in this lineup- excuse the pun- even though the history isn't completely linear. I'm sure the Islamic world loves Marcuse new leftism.

http://www.jpost.com//HttpHandlers/ShowImage.ashx?id=337451&w=822&h=537

Thank you dear Stalin for our happy childhood...

http://soviet-art.ru/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Thank-you-dear-Stalin-for-our-happy-childhood-1-300x210.jpg

It's interesting- with respect- that Aiden says in his final point that the Left isn't Marxist yet seems to defend Marxist Economics earlier on