Quote from: RE on Apr 25, 2026, 06:10 PMFar as Mao and Pol Pot are concerned, they had good ideas and bad ones.

Indeed. And it only cost tens of millions of people's their lives. Around here the MIB occasionally deciding to erase posts that are meaningless in the greater context is taken quite seriously, but idiots running countries starving their citizens by the tens of millions? They had some good ideas to make up for that. Which of their good ideas balanced this scale when it comes to their people?

Quote from: RECollective ownership of the means of production and abolishment of private property is a pretty good idea.

Stalin thought the same, and handed Ukraine the Holodomor. When will these "good ideas" that in the past just murdered tens of millions finally work do you think?

Quote from: REPurging the society of the rich and privileged elite also a pretty good idea.  Abolishment of capitalism also good.  Purging Universities of intellectuals not so good.

Yeah, not worried about purging universities, but more starving everyone in sight with how well these ideas worked out in the past. But hey, at least the rich and privileged got spanked as well!

Quote from: RESuburb dwellers going back to farming is a pretty good idea, it's certainly a more sustainable form of living than shopping at the mall and commuting 50 miles a day in traffic to work in a 100 story tall air conditioned skyscraper.

So you are with Heinberg, Pol Pot, Mao and Stalin when it comes to this "back to farming" idea? What happens to folks unable to participate like you, just bullets to the head or a gas chamber?

Quote from: RE....just that the dependence on a finite resource was bound to cause disruption when the resource became hard to come by.  It doesn't take much to disrupt a complex system, as evidenced by the fact is all it takes to completely screw up the global economy is a few towel heads with speed boats and shoulder fired missiles and RPGs.

Dependence on finite resources is WHAT HUMANS HAVE DONE to date. It isn't as though humans all got together at a big confernece during the hunting and gathering stage and decided to stay that way, knowing in advance what dependency on non-renewables would entail. Although any economist could also argue )and do) that this dependency is required to leverage to a future we can see right now (even if it is the early stages) of renewable energy, fusion waiting inthe wings, an electrified world, the ability to increase recovery factors and efficiencies in accessing those non-renewable resources, and so on and so forth. Economics isn't a physical or natural science for a reason, but it does allow for GREAT storytelling.

Quote from: REAnyhow, whether PO occured in 2008, 2018 or sometime in the future, we're definitely in the deep doo doo now as the shortages begin migrating from Asia to ports all over the world.

Pick a year anywhere between Jan 1 1900 and today and I'll come up with a deep doo-doo story. Dooming is what doomers do, if not the Mayan Calendar, then peak oil. If not that, then Yellowstone. Continue ad infinitum. "Being in deep do do" is a throwaway perpetual motion machine among the doomer legions. You've still got a working brain, you can at least pretend you aren't the only one in the room with one.