ACA Repeal/Replace: Progressives Face Moral Dilemma

[Kinser79]

(03-22-2017, 01:38 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Kinser.

Tired of all the cut pasting.  Responding ad-hoc.

Just reviewing one short view on the four basic patterns of human culture.  Each period had distinctly different methods for energy, weapons, ways of sharing information and styles of government.

• Hunter Gatherer: human muscle, wood and stone human muscle, memory and verbal, tribal rule.
  
• Agricultural: animal muscle, metal human muscle, written language, hereditary empire.
  
• Industrial: fossil fuel & steam, chemical, printed language, evolving towards democracy.
  
• Information:  ?, weapons of mass destruction and insurgency, computer network, ? 
  

I feel it too soon to call what the mature Information Age pattern might be.  It seems clear we’ll have to wean off fossil eventually, but to what?  I suspect direct vote computer democracy will be necessary to bypass the influence of the elites, but those committed to the status quo try hard to make that seem unworkable.  So far there hasn’t been movement in that direction worth mentioning.  If the pendulum keeps swinging, eventually direct vote networked might be tried in earnest.

I can’t succinctly articulate why agricultural age peasants never got to vote, but intuitively, yes, that is part of the agricultural pattern.

Yes, the printing press was very important.  However, if military and agricultural means of acquiring wealth and power continued to dominate manufacturing, I don’t know that the printing press alone would have triggered a new wave of civilization.  That’s an irrelevant question, though.  The same sort of technology that created the printing press created enough new sources of wealth to weaken the influence of old nobility.  A lot of it was the new class of elites (Robber Barons) needing to replace the old (nobility).

For some reason, you end up aligned with ruling elite classes.  You favored the Marxist elite ruling class, and now Trump’s robber barons.  You fight for privilege rather than equality.  I don’t see the quest for equality as complete in the West.  This might be a crucial place where we aren’t going to agree.  I will continue to advocate for the races, cultures and genders who are being kept in their place.  You seem fond enough of your privilege to continue to cling.

I’m very curious as to what will become in the next 2T.  Like your mother, I don’t really anticipate seeing it.  By that time, I don’t think it will be possible to deny global warming.  I expect a strong element of environmental ideals and activism, and a great deal of anger directed at the earlier generations who denied denied denied, who took zero to weak actions.  I am not sure we will have a regeneracy, crisis and high.  We might go straight from a 3T stagnant pendulum to an awakening feeling.  I anticipate a distrust of corporations, a distrust of representative democracy that becomes a servant of the elites, and strong environmental concerns.

Representative democracy did wonderful things during the transition to the Industrial patterns, but if the government doesn’t become more responsive and united, direct vote democracy might be seen as necessary.

While the next generation of blue prophets won’t be twins of the 1960s hippies, if they look around and see a ruined planet and dysfunctional elite serving government, they might easily be just as angry as the hippies and just as demanding of change.

But that is still just over the horizon.  As my magic eight ball is fond of saying, “Answer Hazy, Try Again Later”.

I think that we're mostly on the same page, more or less, mostly we'll be quibbling over details that I foresee that it may actually be impossible for anyone older than X to see.  Indeed many X themselves would have trouble with them but I'm hardly a core Xer so...

WRT the information age:  If we take into account the computer network alone then we know that we're going to required massive base load electrical energy generation.  Wind and solar power are too intermittent for that, and storage solutions are unlikely--so I'd argue in favor of nuclear power of some sort.  It is either building nuke plants or have a great leap backward.  I'm not in favor of a great leap backward so nuclear it is.

This of course could be solid state nuclear (what most people think of when they think nuclear) but there is an alternative that was developed during the 1950s and 1960s.  It both works, and does not allow for mass proliferation of bomb making material--one reason why solid state was pursued.  This is of course the Liquid Florine Thorium Reactor or (LFTR).

I would also say that where labor can be replaced through automation it will be.  This of course assumes that the whole works don't come tumbling down

WRT the printing press:  I would argue that agricultural and military changes became inevitable once it was invented and implemented.  Having the ability to produce a massive amount of written material, it became advantageous to learn to read, once learning to read became common plans, ideas and so on could be remotely stored in books that could be accessed by anyone--and not just a handful of monks

WRT to equality:  I don't view humans as equal.  We are not equally tall, or equally smart, or equally handsome.  The very idea that humans are all equal is utopian--not to mention dehumanizing.  In order to make everyone equal it is required that some force make everyone equally poor, equally ignorant and equally degraded.  One has a choice, he can choose to be free or choose to be equal.  I've seen equality and it doesn't interest me in the slightest.

As for aligning with elites...PBR has a theory.  But you can get it from the horse's mouth if you prefer.  I side with whatever elite seems to be on the winning side.  I'm a nomad, I care little ideals or whatever other idealist pie-in-the-sky Prophets would focus on.  I have larger concerns--getting for me and mine. 

WRT the coming 2T:

1.  I think that global warming is a thing.  Where I have always differed with the watermelon factions (green on the outside red on the inside--and I men red in the more traditional sense rather than the GOP sense; I often refer to the EGOP and Dim-ocratic parties as the Uniparty, two sides/same coin) is in how much of it is anthropogenic.  Evidence seems to indicate that solar out put is increasing as there is also apparent warming on Mars, Venus (both planets have been way behind on the whole industrialization thing btw) and other celestial bodies.  Imagine that, an object that contains 95% of the matter in a star system is affecting the other 5%.  Who would have thunk.

I do think it should be noted that environmental predictions have about the same track record as other doomsday prophesies.

2.  Idealism and activism on the enviromental front is probably going to happen.  It happened in the GPSaec and the MillSaec so there is no reason to not expect it in the NXTSaec.  Where I think it will differ is on the focus.  The past 2T was culture and lifestyle focused, the next one is likely to be ideology and effort focused.

3.  We have already had a regeneracy.  I see it as having happened during Obama's term.  Namely Tea Party and Occupy.  The culmination was the election via new media and meme magic of Donald John Trump.  He is also the GC if those actually exist--don't let the hair color fool you, it comes from a bottle.  We will at some point in the net 8 years hit crisis climax and then shift to a resolution-exposition.  I've never liked the term "high" for 1Ts.  I think you've already seen my arguments as to why.

WRT representative democracy:  I think that as more and more people link up to computer networks should the state continue to have a role direct democracy may indeed be the next wave.  Generally speaking though this  would mean greater decentralization not more.  Indeed just about everything about the proposed incoming information age demands de-centralization rather than centralization.

As to "Blue Neo-prophets".  I don't buy into the idea that there is a red and blue really.  At least not where the state is concerned.  With people there are those who favor liberty and authoritarianism.  The left-right divide of the industrial age is giving way to the up-down divide of the information age (See diagram of a political compass).