Quote from: RE on Jun 22, 2023, 02:20 PMI don't think all murderers deserve to be denigrated or marked as insane.

Indeed. Openheimer was a hero, along with Nimitz, Marshall, Westmoreland, all the murdering heroes of the US.

Quote from: RE"Back to the land" efforts made in earlier times did not come under the same circumstances as now, they were not particularly well planned or executed and you can't identify that as the cause of death.  The problems were political and economic, they went along with political purges and economic embargos and distribution problems.

Same circumstances are hardly required to demonstrate how poorly the idea worked out multiple times in the past. Or how uninformed Richard was when he supported the same idea. And I CAN identify large scale efforts to go back to the land as being lethal because...you know...millions died. It isn't in dispute. Bad politics mixed with idiot ideas mixed with folks as misinformed as Richard still was in 2007 and presto...plenty of dead people. The straight line from here to there has already been drawn, and while there were other issues happening in tandem with the main idea, they didn't cause the people to starve. The back to land idea not working by failing to grow food did.

Quote from: REAlthough it did not progress very far or last long enough, the Back to the Land movement here in the 60s & 70's didn't end up with millions of dead people, in fact I don't know of any deaths you could attribute directly to that.

In order for millions to have died in the others mentioned, more than those millions needed to be involved in the experiment. How many multi-million people samples of back to the land movements in the US do you have we can discuss and compare with the otehr efforts? A trick question of course, designed to demonstrate that hippys singing happy songs and pretending to be nothing so much as some Amish folks on a small scale isn't what Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot did, and Richard was talking about.

Quote from: REThe Amish have been pretty successful with their version of Back to the Land living.  You are conflating political and economic issues with the philosophical and practical ones in order to justify your conclusions.  Its a lousy argument.

The Amish have done quite well. The real ones anyway, not the ones who take advantage of the trappings of modern life and perhaps Amish in religious outlook only. You will notice that the Amish do what they do WILLINGLY, such is not the case with the examples I provided, and Richard SPECIFICALLY required the government to move suburbanites to the countryside. He was talking about EXACTLY the same thing. No need to justify conclusions when the examples do it for me. It isn't an argument either, for the same reason. I simply noted the link between Richard's ideas, and the failed examples as they played out in real life at scale.

Quote from: REGiven your general attitude it's no surprise you wouldn't board one of the ocean towm bubbles.

Sounds like an asssumption of attitude perhaps not in evidence. Neither of us are spring chickens anymore RE, and my philosophy in life is more related to quality than quantity. Surely you are familiar with this perspective if only because I'm betting you know something or another about Hunter Thompson?


Your upbringing or life experience might have guided you to a philosophy of living safely, carefully, avoiding risk, in order to hopefully live many years. I'm a Hunter Thompson guy. So living like a battery in Matrix for new benign overlords strikes me as fine for the lemmings of the world.

Quote from: REGiven the fact I came up with the idea and proposed it, it should be no surprise also I would jump at the chance. 

You did say it was a choice, and you are as free to make yours as I am mine.

Quote from: REI also would gladly send my 10 year old off on the adventure.  Obviously if he or she applied they want to go and it would give a good chance for at least one of my descendants to survive SHTF day.
RE

I can't say my becoming a father had anything to do with creating descendants, but as I age I appreciate having done it not because I needed to be a parent, but because of the experiences that evolved from that action. Having chldren does change ones perspective, and them having a chance and not being of age to make their own choice, I would vote for them to take the chance. Just as I would not.