posted
mph -- I love it. I haven't used it in awhile, though.
It's a dia-somethingorother. I got it online from a store that caters to the Amish (figure that one out.)
I'll try to find the exact model for you. I also have a book that rates different brands/models. (The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book -- If you don't have it you should, Bev would love it.)
quote:Originally posted by Scott R: I have a better idea: we hold a riotous fourth of July party in which all the weapons that can be destroyed are destroyed.
I've made dandelion wine before. (Hi, y'all! Par-tay! Er, except for the Word of Wisdom part. Scratch that. Make it dandelion tisane. Whoo-hoo!)
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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Back to the original question for a bit. I'm not sure anyone needs my hardcore journalism skills. I would do my best to be a representative of Islam. I'm an old, 67 year old codger, and I'd probably die of shock.
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quote:Not to mention once we found a militia's headquarters or a government armory we would have plenty of guns and ammunition for hunting. The contents of the armory would have to be under the strictest guard however.
The part that would worry me would be knowing there is an armory out there and wondering what type of person is going to find it first.
Which brings up the question of ownership. What would the policy be? Would everything begin as being community property, which would make MPH's piece of scrap something that he wouldn't have the right to offer to Scott? What about property claims or luxury items that remain from the old civilization? And what could be done about thieves (which would probably be harder to prove) when they can simply go to some other community and start over with a brand new identity?
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Well, I would think that anything that was in your possession before would have to be yours. And anything that you worked for/found would be yours unless it was of such significant value to the community (weapons cache, medical supplies) that it should be held in common ownership and distribution should be communally decided on. There can be a degree of communal property/helping while still preserving individual ownership; see common lands for an example.
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quote:Originally posted by camus: [QUOTE] And what could be done about thieves (which would probably be harder to prove) when they can simply go to some other community and start over with a brand new identity?
The set-up for this scenario is that only Hatrackers survive and we're all (magically) living in the same place. There is no other community to go to.
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: *wraps arms protectively around DVD collection*
Who am I kidding. *claims the Library of Congress*
Now, that, we're going to have to confiscate. It could provide valuable resources for the community's survival. Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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I disagree. With approximately 10,000 hatrackers surviving, I think it would split up into several smaller communities.
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quote:But what if there are a limited number of say flame throwers, or say an antiaircraft cannon? Who gets those? Firearms and grenades I can see easily being divided as best as possible but generally speaking, the more powerful the weapon the fewer there are around.
Hmmm, perhaps divy them out to the leaders? I just don't think there'd be the resources to have people guard an armory.
quote: My LDS-style provisions consist of a couple jars of fruit, and 800 pounds of unground wheat.
Hmmmm, I forgot about this angle. I suppose at first there would probably be only one community and that the leaders would be the Mormons with food storage. After that ran out, I suspect the splits would start happening. Unless of course we can still raid Walmarts. And if that's the case, we wouldn't really NEED to farm for a very long time. In order to properly hypothesize we need to decide how much stuff is still usable. Is this The Stand or Alas Babylon?
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quote: Unless of course we can still raid Walmarts. And if that's the case, we wouldn't really NEED to farm for a very long time. In order to properly hypothesize we need to decide how much stuff is still usable. Is this The Stand or Alas Babylon?
The amount of food stored in Walmarts and other grocery stores is truly negligible in comparison to the needs of the community they serve. When I lived in Seattle, the shelves of the groceries went bare every time they forcast a major snow storm. Unless we are talking about a neutron bomb scenario that kills people but leaves everything else in tact, the Walmart and Cosco shelves will be empty within the first day.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote: My LDS-style provisions consist of a couple jars of fruit, and 800 pounds of unground wheat.
Hmmmm, I forgot about this angle. I suppose at first there would probably be only one community and that the leaders would be the Mormons with food storage. ?
The average farmer has a heck of a lot more grain (and likely canned fruits & veggies) than what Scott is describing. The Mormons are not the only ones with food storage. Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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I am totally with Blayne Bradley. In fact my native instincts are so strongly for cooperation rather than competition that I am shocked when I discover people who disagree.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:Originally posted by The Pixiest: Scott: I would think it's pretty clear. Our fictional MPH could sit on his butt and still get fed in the socialist example. (unless they FORCED him to work against his will. *cracks whip*
And In a capitalist system, the fictional MPH who has found some scrap metal and was therefore able to get his fields pollunated, can insist that other people work his fields in exchange for food while he sits idle.
quote:[/qb] In the barter society example, He can choose to work for fictional-me, starve, or find some other way to grow/hunt food. [/QB]
You are making the big assumption that there will be enough basic resources (land, water, minerals, wild game etc.) that there will always be some available that no one has claimed. This is an assumption that has rarely been true anywhere in the world.
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quote:The amount of food stored in Walmarts and other grocery stores is truly negligible in comparison to the needs of the community they serve. When I lived in Seattle, the shelves of the groceries went bare every time they forcast a major snow storm. Unless we are talking about a neutron bomb scenario that kills people but leaves everything else in tact, the Walmart and Cosco shelves will be empty within the first day.
I live within ten minutes of 3 Walmarts, a CostCo, a Sams, 4 Tom Thumbs, 2 Krogers, 4 Albertsons, and probably more that I don't pay attention to. When we extend the radius to stores within a three day's journey, I think there's ample food to feed everyone for a few years.
Posts: 1947 | Registered: Aug 2002
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Rabbit: There's a whole lot more to capitalism and the barter society than competition. If that's all you understand about what I've posted in specific and capitalism in general, no wonder you were shocked.
What Blayne is suggesting is not simply socialism, it's slavery and possibly suicide. If you don't work as much as society expects you to, they will find ways to MAKE you work. Failing that, you will be overwhelmed with deadbeats who don't do any work because they are alienated from the fruits of their labour as society takes it and redistributes it the way it sees fit. Everyone will become heavy on Need and light on Means. Who will volunteer they know how to do something when doing so will mean much more work for them at no additional reward? You may scream "me me!" and surely a few other people might, but the majority won't. And if even a small minority don't your society is in trouble. Then you're back to the Crack The Whip option.
In a barter society, you will make what you can and trade it for what you need. What is more cooperative than a fair trade that makes both people happy?
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
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How long would perishables last though?
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Blayne Bradley
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The Pixiest ytour entire post is ridiculas and implies that the vast majority of society as we know it is retarded. I have no suggested slavry or suicide, but Scientific Socialism, pooling together the communities resources and labours to reach common goal. EVERY society would qualify as a slave state by our narrow definition, societies all find ways to make their members productive the difference is the amount of effort invested to get said result the assumption of being overwhelmed by dead beats is simple paranoia and as I said implies humanity is retarded.
A barter society becomes a capitalist society, where the wealth of nations is concentrated eventually and enevitably into the hands of the few and it is capitalism that leads to indentured slaves, and if you are not one of the oppressors or on of the oppressed you are dead for that is capitalism at its core competition, if you cannot compete you are dead, I offer something with more hope and humanity.
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quote:You are making the big assumption that there will be enough basic resources (land, water, minerals, wild game etc.) that there will always be some available that no one has claimed. This is an assumption that has rarely been true anywhere in the world.
This is true; but if that assumption is not correct, and if the two farms in question cannot produce enough food for everybody, then somebody is going to die. There is no way to redistribute 2000 daily calories to adequately feed 2 people - neither capitalism nor communism can accomplish this feat. (Some varieties of theocracy claim to be able to do it, but that's not the discussion.) The only question is who is going to do the dying; this might possibly differ between the two systems if they were strictly enforced, but in fact you'd be much more likely to get anarchy, and the one who shoots first survives.
I think those of you who are drawing examples from history are ignoring the fact of scaling. Communal societies of a few thousand people have worked extremely well in the past. Conversely you can't actually have a full-scale capitalist society of a few thousand people, or rather you can't have the maximally oppressive Dickens-England-child-labour kind, because firstly labour is expensive and secondly there isn't the strong enforcement mechanism to make private property really sacrosanct.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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Yes, capitalism is least about competition, and most about mutually beneficial exchange. By producing as one is best at doing and exchanging with others, everyone becomes better off.
Competition is just a governor on the system to ensure that people have a harder time exploiting others for unfair compensation.
Strangely, Blayne, there have been large numbers of indentured slaves in every experiment with command economies, and very few in societies with open markets. And the worst ten percent of US workers live orders of magnitude better than the worst 80% (or more, not sure how much more) in, say, the USSR ever did.
Funny how that works out.
You mistake wealth for a zero sum game. Yes, market economies allow some people to become extremely wealthy. This does not make everyone else those people's slaves, and is far preferable to the common situation in command economies, where the deciders have extreme wealth . . . and everyone else has nearly nothing.
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Blayne, before you hit "Add Reply", could you please check them for errors? It appears to be getting worse.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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KoM: some communal living experiments on that scale worked out well. Most failed, and often due to things like free-rider problems.
There are enough hatrackers to support a viable town, and to have a reasonably competitive market for basic items. As a rule of thumb, it only takes a dozen producers for a market to be approximately efficient, and for staples like food and basic construction there would be more producers.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Well, you've all wasted your time arguing about your system of government.
Now that I've registered, the community will clearly be a Norrocracy. I will be in charge of governing, law-making, and, of course, law-enforcement (my specialty).
The punishment for all infractions will be roundhouse kicks of varying severities.
During the workweek, I plow fields using only my beard. After dinner, I will unwind by roundhouse kicking trees into perfectly formed 4"x4"s, to be used for building. Expect the first generation of younglings to all be fathered by me, as everyone know Chuck Norris impregnates women by his mere proximity. There's no need to worry about mutation due to inbreeding in the succeeding generations, though, as Chuck Norris's DNA is perfect.
It will be utopia. And for anyone who disagrees with any of the above, well, you can guess what they've got coming, right?
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quote:Originally posted by Chuck Norris: During the workweek, I plow fields using only my beard. After dinner, I will unwind by roundhouse kicking trees into perfectly formed 4"x4"s, to be used for building. Expect the first generation of younglings to all be fathered by me, as everyone know Chuck Norris impregnates women by his mere proximity. There's no need to worry about mutation due to inbreeding in the succeeding generations, though, as Chuck Norris's DNA is perfect.
It will be utopia. And for anyone who disagrees with any of the above, well, you can guess what they've got coming, right?
quote:Originally posted by fugu13: KoM: some communal living experiments on that scale worked out well. Most failed, and often due to things like free-rider problems.
Please give examples. All the small scale communal living experiments which I'm familiar with either succeeded or failed because of a combination of greed and dishonesty. Eventually some members of the community decide they want more stuff than their neighbors have. They either leave the community figuring they can do better on their own, often taking key community resources with them, or they start "skimming the cream of the milk" for themselves (has anyone read "Folk of the Fringe".) In the end thats what ends up tearing communities apart.
I am unaware of any communal experiments that failed due to free loaders. If you have some examples, please give me the references.
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I am sort of amused with the debate over societal ideals. If humanity is whittled down to a select populace of a few thousand people, you will get no ideals. It won't be a 'competitive' environ, nor will it be a 'socialist' environ. In fact, you can throw away all of those paradigms and forget about the academic discussions fostered in a postindustrial world, and back up to the very basics of social contract.
Anyone who survives and can sustain themselves will revert immediately to loose and natural organizations most resembling tribes or bands. Direction and political power is managed by force of will. The most charismatic and promising members of society will lead, simply because they are naturally easing (or preying upon) the intense fear and need for security that everyone will be facing. People will cooperate within these structures, but not within the framework of an idealistic 20th-century industrialized socialism model. Nor will barter or specie be of much importance for generations.
The real issue will be species sustainability. The few people remaining after a couple of winters may be able to live comfortably for a time, but will there be enough of a population base to ensure expanding population beyond a single generation, or will the pool shrink to zero? The population of 'hatrack' may not be sufficient enough to ensure the continuation of the species.
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quote:they either leave the community figuring they can do better on their own, often taking key community resources with them, or they start "skimming the cream of the milk" for themselves (has anyone read "Folk of the Fringe".) In the end thats what ends up tearing communities apart.
I'm trying to remember which story lines up with your hypothesis, and I'm drawing a blank.
quote:the real issue will be species sustainability. The few people remaining after a couple of winters may be able to live comfortably for a time, but will there be enough of a population base to ensure expanding population beyond a single generation, or will the pool shrink to zero? The population of 'hatrack' may not be sufficient enough to ensure the continuation of the species.
I read somewhere that the human race can repopulate itself if more than 60 humans survive. I don't know if it's true or not, but there are some things you're forgetting about this scenario.
1) We're Jatraqueros. We don't kill, steal, or cheat each other.
2) There will be at least 5000 of us, not including families. That's a large and diverse population base.
3)We've got the good sense to migrate to a temperate climate, if we're not already in one. Assuming the infrastructure is still in place, migrating to Pixiest's California won't be difficult at all (assuming we're in the US). Winters won't be a problem.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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Failure and retention rates in anarchist communes is always a great subject!
Personally I've never thought that political anarchism was a workable idea ever but even my cold leathery statist heart is willing to acknowledge the myriad number of reasons that communes fail that aren't actually a negative reflection upon the ideology.
The best example is when they try to be self-sustaining agriculturally, despite being stuck having to use whatever limited land is available that civilization hasn't already claimed and fenced off. Often, they'd try to get farming communes to work up in remote mountain regions that was only really available to them because nobody was going to farm there anyway, and then they get all surprised when corn fails to grow well that close to treeline. Derp!
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quote:they either leave the community figuring they can do better on their own, often taking key community resources with them, or they start "skimming the cream of the milk" for themselves (has anyone read "Folk of the Fringe".) In the end thats what ends up tearing communities apart.
I'm trying to remember which story lines up with your hypothesis, and I'm drawing a blank.
I forget the name, but the one with the teacher who reports the people who are selling stuff on the black market.
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quote:I read somewhere that the human race can repopulate itself if more than 60 humans survive.
I wonder if that's true. I could believe it. I know I've read that human beings are remarkably genetically homogeneous.
I believe it was in A Short History of Nearly Everything that I read that a normal band of 25 chimpanzees in the wild has more genetic diversity than the entire human race.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quote:they either leave the community figuring they can do better on their own, often taking key community resources with them, or they start "skimming the cream of the milk" for themselves (has anyone read "Folk of the Fringe".) In the end thats what ends up tearing communities apart.
I'm trying to remember which story lines up with your hypothesis, and I'm drawing a blank.
I forget the name, but the one with the teacher who reports the people who are selling stuff on the black market.
I believe it was "The Fringe."
Posts: 2596 | Registered: Jan 2006
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Porter, it appears from recent genetic research that humans have only 2 ancestors, 1 male and 1 female. The more complex the organism, the less genetic diversity exists within the species. Sponges are the least complex and most genetically diverse multicellular creature. Humans are the opposite. All other species are in between.
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farmgirl/vonk: Is that the one where the paraplegic teacher gets tossed into the gully?
That was one of my favorite stories from the collection. It saddens me that I don't remember it well...
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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quote:Originally posted by steven: Porter, it appears from recent genetic research that humans have only 2 ancestors, 1 male and 1 female. The more complex the organism, the less genetic diversity exists within the species. Sponges are the least complex and most genetically diverse multicellular creature. Humans are the opposite. All other species are in between.
Um, no. You are probably referring to 'mitochondrial Eve' and the corresponding Adam whose adjective I don't recall. They are people who are ancestors to all living humans. However, they lived about 70000 years apart (IIRC), and neither of them is the sole ancestor-to-all-people of their gender, just the ones we can identify with current genetic methods.
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Are you sure of that, KoM? Can you link it for me? I hate to ask you, but all the research I've seen indicates that all modern humans have only those two ancestors.
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
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Rabbit: most of the prominent literature on why communes survive identifies strategies that tackle the free rider problem (such as religious strictures; see Iannaccone, for instance Iannaccone 92) as key to their success.
Some specific literature on that effect on communes is in "Religion and Intragroup Cooperation: Preliminary Results of a Comparative Analysis of Utopian Communities" by Sosis.
"Why Communes Fail: A Comparative Analysis of the Viability of Danish and American Communes", by Shey, is interesting in that their conclusions state that free-loading/growing too big was just not a problem in the Danish communes (though they contrast that with American communes) -- however, they were talking about complete free-loading, not milder forms of free-riding. From their data:
Overidealism -- Unfulfilled Expectations, which comprises ten main components, including lack of responsibility, was identified by 19% of commune member respondents as a reason other communes dissolve.
Lack of Communal Spirit -- Action, which comprises seven main components, including cooperation (lack of) and avoiding communal responsibility, was identified as a reason by 13%.
As for problems the commune members' own communes have encountered, 14% called division of work of major significance and 56% called it of some significance. Too much individualism, which is frequently a manifestation of free-riding (go off and do your own things while letting the community take care of what the community as a whole needs; the respondents are reported to have viewed it as meaning "not doing one's share of the work, not being willing to participate in the daily routine and by generally isolating oneself") was viewed has having major significance by 31% and some significance by 35%.
And those are in a set of communes (Danish ones, that is) viewed as having less of a free rider problem than others!
And of course, most Danish communes failed. Infighting is frequently a stronger component (though if the infighting is over division of community labor, it can hardly be called a property of any small group), but free riding is often a substantial contributor to commune failure.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:This certainly does not mean that she is the ancestral mother of all who came after her; during her time and even before her time there were many women and men who contributed to the nuclear genes we now carry. (To see how this can be, check out Tracing Ancestry.) It also does not mean that the mtDNA originated with this "Eve"; she and her contemporaries also had their own "most recent common ancestor though matrilineal descent," a woman who lived even further into the past who passed on her mtDNA to everyone living during "Eve's" time. (We get our mtDNA from that same, older ancestor. She's just not, to us, the most recent common ancestor.)
posted
Actually, even in tiny communes like the family, freeloading is a problem. I love my hubby but he doesn't pull his weight around the house. We both work but I do the cooking and laundry and I'm lucky if I can get him to lug the trash to the dumpster.
I don't think this is an uncommon problem. In fact, I'd go as far to say that it's a cultural problem (though I think it's getting better.)
Posts: 7085 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:Originally posted by The Pixiest: Actually, even in tiny communes like the family, freeloading is a problem. I love my hubby but he doesn't pull his weight around the house. We both work but I do the cooking and laundry and I'm lucky if I can get him to lug the trash to the dumpster.
I don't think this is an uncommon problem. In fact, I'd go as far to say that it's a cultural problem (though I think it's getting better.)
Actually I hear more and more about girls who do not keep tidy households or even basic hygiene (leave dishes in the sink for weeks, messes in the bathroom are uncleaned).
I remember growing up with the distinct impression that men were slobs on the average and that was wrong, but girls were uniformly more oriented towards tidy clean environments.
Boy that myth got shattered when I first went to college.
I am scared to hell as to what the generation of people my kids will grow up associating with.
edit: Though I agree that the sentiment, "Women belong ONLY in the kitchen and on the birthing table" is taking a much deserved beating.
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