Originally Posted by deprav

Yep, as I told you I've none, but it's not irrational to consider this being strongly plausible because UFO's implies 3 possibilities :
-natural phenomenon
-man made technology (but that we, the people, never heard of)
-Extra-terrestrial technology.

Originally Posted by deprav

Yes counter culture has always existed but was accessible only by the "aficionados" of the said culture and was hard to get into, since it wasn't welcome into the "mainstream" industry. And "counter culture" people has always been pointed out as marginals.

Now people can access "counter culture" as easily as they can access "industrial culture", and that bothers the industry (producing brainless shit for most), and therefore the political ideologies going along with counter culture become less "marginal" et explainable/understandable for a larger part of people.

Originally Posted by deprav

Yep I understand the supply and demand being an universal concept, and I wasn't proposing to "throw it all out".
But the principle of an over-consumerist system is to "create more demand", not regarding the impact on the environment. Who needs a bigger/flatter TV to watch the same crap? A big part of last decade's "technological advances" are just marketing "straw-man" advances, faster gaming consoles, better HD TV, surround 38.1, plastic toys etc... (plus considering the programmed obsolescence to boost the demand). All those things don't exist to answer human needs, they just exist to boost the industrial complex, it's absurd considering the only reason to boost the industry is the profit of some people, at the expend of our health.

My point is to reach a "human scaled" system, not a system to create exorbitant profit for 5% of the population.

Originally Posted by deprav

Most people had home and food when we had kings as well.
The actual state of something is no proof of its efficience because it doesn't mean we can't still improve it. It's like you're staying fixed on a system who started a a long time ago, in this period of time we sure did improve technologically, and now that the system you defend have beared its fruits you don't want to harvest them and plant another tree that would answer the needs of more people.

And working hard for something is old fashionned propaganda, considering the number of unemployed people, we could divide the labour to make people work less for the same result. Even more if we considere all the jobs that would become useless if we quit the over-consumerist capitalism, it would mean a new distribution of the labour.

Originally Posted by deprav

Erh, what you said here is pretty awful. The situation in Africa is because of European countries who decided to draw the boundaries (in Africa), which started a lot of ethnic wars. And while wars were going on, European countries looted the ressources, and still do.
Families having 8 kids in those countries do so because it's unlikely they'll all reach adulthood, and they don't have any contraceptive mean, because we let them die.
You can be sure in any poor countries struggling to survive, the wound goes deeper and is provoked by a richer countries taking advantage of the situation.

Originally Posted by deprav

Most random people we know are nice, maybe. Even tho we've read on this forums people thinking "homeless people are just lazy fucks that deserve to be poor and sad", that's a pretty shitty mentality, and isn't every nice or sympathetic.
But that wasn't my point. I'm talking about people accessing to "decision-maker" places. You have to be cynical and egocentric to reach such positions, you need to "under-consider" humanbeings and see numbers, voters, profits, cutbacks etc... We're not talking about human politic anymore, in a "self-confident" liberal capitalism it's some human-ressources management.

Originally Posted by saahsaap

The first problem with Capitalism is ...[snip].
...
The fact is that Capitalism does no good unless China and India adopt similar measures, which does not seem realistic.

Or a leaf in the wind, or an airplane at a weird angle etc etc

Counter culture has always been easily accessible. I don't think there is any difference in how widespread counter culture is.

If people weren't buying new TV's constantly, technology like FEDS simply would never have been invented. Then again, despite FEDS being superior technology (CRT too), they were abandoned for convenience of LCDs.

If you don't want as many things, you don't have to work as hard.

I've worked 6 months in the last 2 years, because that's all I need.

Before European conquest there were already slavers and warring tribes. European settlers didn't invent ethnicity.
Africans can just not have 8 kids, they don't have to have sex constantly - why can't they say "oh we have no contraceptives, so let's not have sex and risk a 9th child which will die of starvation".
The are propagating a bad problem. Giving them aid does not help, they are in an unsustainable situation because of their attitudes. If they aren't prepared to help themselves then aid won't save them...

I don't see anything wrong with that. When you have to manage a lot of people, you can't be bogged down by feelings.
Take for instance the Africa situation. If the breeding rate was restricted the problem would fix itself within a generation. And yet you say "oh but they love sex and have no contraceptions, they want to have as many children as possible in case some die". It's dumb, and it's selfish. If most people work together the situation would have been solved by now.