Musings

[ultimatepsi]

First, a new[1] word for the day: Omniism, the belief that everything has a meaning and the opposite of nihilism. Also, it has a double i; how cool is that?

[1]new as in we made it up. I doubt it is a "real" word.

Comments

[endlessgame]

You would probably like a course I'm taking right now, that goes into a bunch of the environmental problems present in the world, and analyzes them from a psychology/human nature perspective. These last few days we've been talking about global warming and the rate of cultural versus biological evolution. The class is kinda cool, and the problems are fun to think about when I'm bored. But right now I'm more tired than bored, so another time if you like, perhaps :)

[ultimatepsi]

Indeed. Some time when we are both in the same place and interested we should talk about this stuff.

[madfilkentist]

You're right that "human nature" is the issue, but not in quite the way you suggest. The nature of humans is that they individually know more about their own desires and needs than other people do. Any system of central planning entails an attempt to determine these things from a distance and optimize them for a huge number of people who are engaging in a huge number of different activities for a vast number of different purposes

[ultimatepsi]

Free markets are cool like that, but require some effort to remain free. Monopolies for instance, tend to emerge in unregulated markets, and then deny the free market to competitors. More applicably, there isn't free trade between countries, and I'm not convinced that there could be as long as there are immigration limits, since that inherently limits the trade of labor.

I'm not suggesting any particular course of action based on this, but this is what comes to mind.

[coriolinus]

The other logistical issue with moving people to where the food is: people are far from a spaceless resource. You'd be building cities right in the middle of the arable land

[ultimatepsi]

You have good points.

My thoughts

[maverick_weirdo]

I think the challenge to is to come up with a sustainable business model for farmers. Production capability is not the same as actual production.

Farming is a high risk speculative business (it IS the comodies market) and most Agri-businesses specialize rather than diversify.

Re: My thoughts

[ultimatepsi]

That too.

[sirroxton]

While I don't share Coriolinus' enthusiasm for the free market, I do believe individual action and swarm intelligence have a role to play, here

[sirroxton]

Again, I realize you're posing a thought problem in order to probe questions of human nature, but there I'd disagree too.
Oops, I should acknowledge that your post takes this possibility into account. Sorry, don't mean to get all antagonistic. We're all on the same side, m'thinks.

[ultimatepsi]

Yes, we rather are on the same side here. I wasn't even remotely suggestion that we actually follow the plan I outlined. It would be a bad idea, but the reasons it is a bad idea help highlight what the underlying problems really are.

I wasn't saying that humans weren't capable of finding solutions either. Instead, I was claiming that any solutions need to work with human nature, not against it, and that a better understanding of humanity would aid that.

Perhaps what I really want is more a-political social science research. That would be a good stepping stone to a better world I think.

[sirroxton]

Yeah, it's an effective debater's trick to explain your position in contrast to another, but it makes one sound awfully argumentative. Sorry, it was only my intent to explore the thought problem.

I think the next big stepping stone is not research, but rather facilitating independent action by people of limited means. Let individuals determine activities with small-dollar donations, and let amateurs do the legwork and planning. It's an ugly, brilliant prospect.