h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

tdeally yes but practically some people waste while others starve

I do not care what the culture is there are people that want power over. For a lover , a house , food , uniqueness. When the floods and bad weather came they had to go negotiate items. I am sure all those were not fair and compassionate trades.

The world would be ok today if people played by compassionate rules of needs first! There are too many suffering now. Don't you think if people could do it they would be?

What went wrong with the people living they way they were? Somebody else showed up. Every little town had this fight. Growth or isolation from outsiders. I do not personally know of an extended family where someone does not run over another.

Sheer comfort in numbers and commonality only go so far. Someone will spot greener pastures or a prettier woman , a bigger animal to head towards. Some wil stay behind lazy ,eating the honey or drinking the wine because they can -with no one watching, every one is doing there job. Haven't you noticed how every work place is teh same? There is always one "noticing all" they are not working as hard-- there is always someone joking and working harder at getting out of work than just doing it. There ia always a power hungry person near the top and near the bottom. There is always a whiner and a over achiever..

WMI- "nobody can cheat forever, especially when everybody tries to do it."
never have all cheated - never have all been loving
I do not expect that to change.

But yes! We have to try anyway

well i guess tryin is what it's all about you gotta keep on truckin but it seems to me that in this day and age starvation should be a thing of the past but the will to feed people seems to be fading in favour of bombing them

Yeah, keep trying, in maybe lots of different ways, local ways, not the only way, then maybe starvation would be pretty a past thing, except for bad years instead of bad markets.

the thing is though there are huge surpluses of food in places and great shortages in otherseven in bad years tonnes are destroyed in order to keep prices up let alone that wasted by the fast food industry it just seems so pointless

They are tragically sad times to me
The conditions for humans and especially children in the workd are dreadful. That is another thing that Bush would not help with as far as signing solution treaties in third world countries.
Adoption, Childrens health, preventative health and womens birth control and abortions.

They charge the poor old folks here a fortune to drink liquids that keep them alive on their smallest of diets. That kind of product could do wonders keeping many alive.

They should be giving milking cows to areas where cows are sacred, they would grow to be old and well cared for and useful. IF they drink milk (add vitamins) and eat the eggs ? Many religions and cultures have food specific diet rituals.

Milk and eggs and vitamins are great nutrician bases for the underweight and children. Surely rice could be grown inside greenhouses. Mushrooms and many of the medicinal herbs and plants could be grown in small gardens. Clean water would be needed which is rare.

hell the average supermarket dumpster would feed quite a few 3rd world villages

Yes and the dumpsters do feed many people here ,outside resturants and schools are good too.

NAFTA has virtually destroyed small scale Mexican agriculture. Then they complain when the campasinos want to come to the United States.

People can feed themselves if they retain use of the land and resources in their own countries. It's when others come in and alienate those things that famine arrives with them. It's been done in the Sudan in just the last few years but there are numerous other examples all over the world.

International aid is pretty useless because by the time the food arrives, the famine is often over or the people are already dead. The reason it takes so long is because instead of getting the food from the region, they get it from places which have surpluses they can no longer dump on the world market, that might be months away by ship. Then the thugs sponsored by the multinationals horde the food until they get compliance with their policies or whatever.

And the international bankers tot up another column of debt to lean on the people for essentially nothing actually rendered to those people. Pretty good racket ain't it?

Not only does the system lack compassion, it lacks sanity.

yep

that's why i think the elimination of money is essential although probably unattainable

hate to be a bummer but something tangible- collectible would take its place.

It would sure save small scale agriculture if they could pay in kind instead of money. Of course it would save even more if they didn't have to pay taxes and interest too. Then some of that tax money goes to the fatcats running the big farms in the form of subsidies for not producing.

guess that's true but it might make it a bit more difficult to accumulate and easier to divide

Hey, I got it! Why don't we deed everything to the Church and then we just tithe the grain once a season so the monks can make beer? Then the government can tax the beer and the bankers can drink it with their appertifs.

Lets hope

well it's6 am here and i been onthis thing all night so i'm gonna crash

Bad luck, I just got on.

Please accept my contrition before you read this. Please also allow yourself a little time before you dash off a rejoinder.

Tradition, aye that will certainly save each of us in our own place in our own time with our own specific kind, is that not right, then? Technology, if only each of will just realize that it is the bane of our existence all will begin to getter better. Local and remaining so immune from any wind of change that is not at all insular. Aye, if only the wheel had not been invented or arrived into the deep reaches of North America, we might not be crushed by the mighty weight of what it _obviously has spawned. The means of production once mentioned and especially when in conjunction with ownership, even if be collective, must of needs condemn the proposal, and the one who thought it, forthright, to the dustbins of history. Don’t turn into a WMI (woman of massive insignificance). Is it right to so reject the idea, after all it did not state _machine of production. And when is an item transformed into a machine, is a stout stick once balanced on a rock and applied to another rock – ostensibly to move the latter – a machine? Is there no irony in the call for a long ago lost status quo without acknowledging that every word shared is already subject to process of the sum total of what each life has experienced? Is it not at least faintly contrary to call for each to remain in the place where the accident of birth places that one while using the absolute bleeding edge of what you condemn with each stroke, it is computer and the web can’t live with it nor without it. Is there not some question to consider about the cross fertilization of ideas and many other things beside as one calls to any from anywhere who may happen to see it for that long ago, now imagined paradise while telling each of those very same viewers to remain each in their own place? Oh dear heaven, how I hope not to be misunderstood; even more so, how I wonder why ever I was invited by that person - not so long gone but well remembered by me - into or, perhaps most significantly, why I remain in this debate…

once again, my contrition is sincere. there is some doubt, at least within the confines of my own mind, that the statements made can be seen as anything but provocative....

Oh, dearly beloved, it's me maybe needs to be contrite huh? Okay, I'm sorry for once again apparently trying to foil your attempts at breaking the bonds of whatever it is you think binds you. Be free little birdman. Fly!

How interesting to use the machine in this context to discredit the message. It seems the machine allows a vertical expansion more than a horizontal one. What a devious thing ain't it?

Of course the reality of the machine is it utilizes fiber cables going along railroad rightofways, the rightofways of alternate 640 acres of somebody else's land simply seized and disposed of as the railroads saw fit, paying off some of the debts that helped save the bloody Union, promoted to ignorant or frightened immigrants as their quarter sections of the Promised Land, sucking the wealth back east with the kickback schemes that eventually brought them to the attention of the trustbusters.

So in our day another railroad, an electronic one, travels along those rightofways, protected by the law of commerce, an illusion once again of the Promised Land luring the unwary without a clue or a care about how it came to be so.

But it does provide the opportunity to interact vertically rather than horizontally, allowing for visiting not necessarily vanquishing. That's a relative improvement over the older way of going, seeing, conquering. Of course the damage is already done isn't it or so everybody thinks?

Goody, think it, think it however you want. Think of all the invasions to come, the ones that not only alienate the land but the bodies and minds. Think of chips imbedded not in appliances but in bone, monitoring, evaluating, providing feedback, even the ultimate communication of torment.

As I said to Barton just recently at RCO, the problem isn't predation. The problem is too much predation. That's why I tell people to stay where they are, to slow down, to backoff, to refrain from conquests, but that's a terrible thing to say isn't it? A terrible waste of human potential no doubt. To suggest that people curb their appetites? How could I even conceive of such a terrible thing? And all for a fantastic paradise from long ago?

Well not really. Now is always. The past, as you've noted yourself more than once is part of the present, as are the seeds of the future. Now is all the time. One of those pesky fetters that bind people to their heritages, their guilt, their failures. Oh why can't we just forget it and go on, break the fetters once and for all and fly into the future unencumbered by the intertia of our foul material flesh? I don't know?

Just like I don't know what all the consequences would be but I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be very nice, because I'm pretty sure the creator didn't make any mistakes. There's a reason for the constraints I think, an economy of balance that doesn't tolerate much disruption, or too much predation. That's all.