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Indeed. Perhaps we should get started on that encyclopedia?

The democratization of knowledge does give me hope that we have the ability to build the coherent alternative vision that is necessary to beat back these elite-friendly economic policies.

And the world will live as one

by Montereyan (robert at calitics dot com) on Sun Jun 6th, 2010 at 11:01:01 AM EST
[ Parent ]
See my diary
But suppose it got bad. Suppose it got one notch worse than you can contemplate.

I can actually live with the prospect of a massive die-off, even a massive die-off with ecological collapse. The world didn't end with the European black death of the 14th Century.

What I think I have a serious problem with is a collapse of civilisation to the point where knowledge is lost. Even worse, where science and technology themselves are blamed for the disaster.



By laying out pros and cons we risk inducing people to join the debate, and losing control of a process that only we fully understand. - Alan Greenspan
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Jun 6th, 2010 at 11:10:33 AM EST
[ Parent ]
I remember that diary, it smoked me out of my lurking. My response comment suggested that sites like this are, in part, an effort to preserve certain kinds of knowledge, in this case the intellectual building blocks and analytical tools of social democracy, from such a collapse.

Maybe what this diary of mine is getting at is that the ET Think Tank idea is still a very good one.

And the world will live as one

by Montereyan (robert at calitics dot com) on Sun Jun 6th, 2010 at 11:28:11 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Actually, we probably have the basis for a pretty credible critique of the origin, failures and consequences of the present system and of why it remains the dominant view of the economy in diaries and comment threads on ET. Perhaps we should start a link library organized by topics:

  1. How we got where we are.

  2. Why what we are trying to do cannot work.

  3. Why we keep trying doomed policies.

  4. What would work.

  5. Why we won't do what would work.

  6. What you can do to help.

If I had such a list available, other than my own meager efforts, I would be happy to start writing summaries that I could post and we could take apart. We have finite available energy, so a full-on encyclopedia must be a future goal. What we need is a compelling critique of the existing situation and a clear alternative that, at a minimum, most college educated adults could understand, were they to accept that they have been systematically mis-educated and/or misinformed about the nature of the economy and the relation between the economy and our political systems.

The time is now.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Sun Jun 6th, 2010 at 02:02:58 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Diary.

By laying out pros and cons we risk inducing people to join the debate, and losing control of a process that only we fully understand. - Alan Greenspan
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Jun 6th, 2010 at 02:45:31 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Hope to have it up late tonight, just in time for your breakfast reading.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Sun Jun 6th, 2010 at 05:20:45 PM EST
[ Parent ]
It's 4:20 PM, I have shade and it is time to get back to the doomstead's garden.  :-0

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Sun Jun 6th, 2010 at 05:23:03 PM EST
[ Parent ]

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