Over

[matrixmann]

One thing everyone needs to be ready for: If you tear down the current system, it means your current state of wealth is going to vanish too. The gadgets, the electronic devices, the oversupply that you use - is tied to the current economic and political system. If you make it go away, these things only keep existing as a remembrance of different times. There are no more of these things getting produced, the food chain needs to be rebuild from the basic local infrastructure.
There are going to be times of shortages and deprivation again over a certain amount of time.

Comments

[gansje.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. Yet this presents a huge problem; one of the things that helps keep a political structure in place and get its citizens' support is to improve and maintain the citizens' perceived sense of well-being (not their actual well-being, just their sense of well-being). Consumerism's current hold means perceived sense of well-being is measured with consumption-centered metrics. Thus any revolutionary measures to change systems produce dissatisfaction and may, without totalitarianism, collapse. Evolutionary change works more effectively in terms of civil acceptance, but obviously is too slow and unpredictable a process.

[matrixmann]

Precisely what I'm thinking about for the current system.
This is consumerism and consumerism lives of buying and having means to buy. So - taking that away or telling people to lower it means you're going to harvest their rage towards you. Rather they try to fulfill the requirements of the hamster wheel to go on with that than they think for a minute and feel their dignity as a human being and what says everything should serve to not touch this human dignity.
Actually one could dig his head in resignation according to that because the system is going to make sure to keep these circumstances up and only bring sacrifice in when it serves its purposes.
But on the other hand I don't like that idea - and on another hand I see no matter what the system itself says, it has no guarantee to offer that everything keeps going on as it currently is now.
Words mean nothing, deeds are what matter - and the deeds point at "we try to pull everything out of this machine, even life's necessities", which in the end means, in a world with a limit, someone stealing your carrot, your carrot is gone.