Quote from: Enemy of the State on June 29, 2012, 03:45 pmLimetless,I'm not talking about change. I was merely making an observation that differs from the common perception. I have resigned myself to believing that people in general are so fucking stupid that if they were thirsty and you led them to a pool of water they would die of thirst. People get what they tolerate. I pretty much have a FTW attitude any more. Doesn't pay to think otherwise.Hi Enemy,I just wanted the chance to mull over what you've said and go into it in more depth than I did earlier today where I recommended a book(!)First off, these kind of questions have plagued mankind probably since we first started moving on from living only family groups and settled into communities. It's significant to me that economies seem to have fallen into one of the two camps we've described below and it leads me to believe that before we can have a socialist model where the state has a monopoly on all capital without greedy banks fixing interest rates when loaning to one another as has happened here in the UK for instance.Firstly though as you said yourself this would not prevent one country from devastating the economy of another as the EU and USA have been able to do to Iran - have to say I'm actually all for this as it allows us to effect regime change without an all out war. As a country makes moves towards democracy as is the case in Burma for example (I refuse to call it Myanmar!) then such sanctions can be eased or repealed altogether.My suspicion is that if we did move to a resource based economy, it would be at the expense of other nations - I too have read about the US's shameless exploitation of Latin America. Perhaps the most shocking example for me was revealed when reading a newsletter from my bank about America's economic "hitmen" who brought down a Presidential regime in Peru simply so they could regulate the prices of their copper exports...!The same Hitman said that Hugo Chavez had failed to play ball with them as being a Socialist he wanted his government to own utilities providing power and water to the people which he could subsidise from public funds as opposed to allowing private companies with American owners to come in and charge Venezuelans through the nose for their right to drink water and stay warm.Having said this, I don't think it would be true to say that the average Venezuelan enjoys a standard of living or political freedom on par with an American or European! Perhaps our freedom as wage slaves is a little overstated but every time historically we have tried to remove private enterprise from the equation we have seen widespread oppression and suffering.So, this really comes down to the question - is it worth it? For instance there was very little unemployment in the former East German Republic but your wages were largely nominal. The products made available by the state were substandard and took months on end to be produced. We've already discussed for instance how many basic foodstuffs were not available in the shops - the lack of incentive to improve products due to competition was removed and as we saw the country stagnated. Of course if you or I had lived there and mentioned this openly we would have been imprisoned for treason against the state but we would still have a job (albeit one which the government have chosen for you).I admire the ideals of Socialism but I see it these days as an answer begging for a question -we're aware of the deficiencies in our own (capitalist) society and we certainly need greater regulation of our financial system and have taken steps towards this. I'm just not sure we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater and conclude that the system is inherently flawed, particularly as it's clearly the one which appeals most to human nature!V.