I get your frustration, I really do. But how you respond to that is on you. There's absolutely no reason to be transphobic or hateful for any reason, regardless of how frustrated you might be.

Yeah, this is the internet; there are gonna be people who spew crap out everywhere without bothering to do real critical thinking. But the majority of members here are intelligent, well-grounded people and they are perfectly capable of navigating the content here without becoming reactionary and abrasive. You can't blame us for your inability to engage with people who might disagree with you or think differently.

I'm sure we all frustrate one another at times, but most of us recognize we are here not because of our political affiliations, sexual preferences, gender identification, or otherwise--but because we share an interest in a chemical that most of the world would consider us crazy for. If you lose sight of that because of some petty disagreement about capitalism or fur suits, that's totally on you and the community is probably better off without such hostility.

If you can't get down with different perspectives than what are you doing here?

All due respect, but seriously...shame on you.

Capitalism is by no means perfect, but I think a socially-regulated capitalistic system would be the best and most efficient assuming there is no immediate change in human nature.

Humans are naturally greedy. We need scarce resources to survive, and having more and more resources gives us more feelings of safety and security going forward. It is difficult for most people to become comfortable with their current level of wealth, as things can always go wrong and their survival could then be put at risk. The ego viciously works to maintain its structure.

I want to share some material I wrote down after a particularly intense DMT session.



The biggest realization here, for me anyway, is that capitalism directly parallels human sexuality. While we do want pleasure and production, it is also a perverted duty of ours to both continue the human race (by having sex and children) and to constantly produce the means of production, as Marx has written. Society cannot continue by producing alone; it must also produce the means of production.

Scarcity is also very well built into capitalism. You work harder, and you have more opportunity to get a small piece of the limited pie that is made of rival-in-consumption goods (private goods and natural resources). Yes, having a society like this will result in wealth consolidation, but this is where the social regulations come in. Maybe something like increasing inheritance tax to 95% or 100% would help alleviate wealth collection, but then corporations (who are considered people but not affected by inheritance taxes) must also be regulated more heavily and disallowed from participating monetarily in politics.

So snozz, I guess my main question is, in the face of capitalism reflecting human nature so well, how do you propose dismantling the system in a way that wouldn't breed some kind of inequality in a different fashion? Would banking have a legitimate role in a different societal system?

As you said, capitalism and sexualisation go hand in hand. After all, sex sells. Look at all the religions of the world. They all have some sort of monastic order, that swears to celibacy and live their lifes according to their faith, which demands pure simplicity in lifestyle. It promotes, however, intellectual growth. It would seem like it wouldn't, given the amount of ignorant religious people. But the truth of the matter is, those people aren't religious. These monks/nuns are. They are all highly intelligent. The understand the truth of what their religion is about. That truth is what I seek, from all religions and psychedelics.

In regards to your main question, although I'm not snozz, I think that it's as simple as a global attitude change. If everyone were trusting, compassionate and empathetic towards one another, we'd live in a much better world. Trouble is, all of those qualities are kind of associated with communism/socialism. And clearly we don't want compassion in our world. I've heard people spew vitriolic bile towards anything related to communism/socialism. Look at how a lot of people called Obama a socialist, just because he wanted everyone to be helped. I don't see how that is a bad thing. It's better than releasing hellfire on to an Arabic village. Everyone wants more for themselves. That's the trouble in the world. "The world has enough for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed." - Gandhi.

If trust, compassion and empathy were guiding factors in our lives, capitalism would be dismantled naturally. No violent revolution.

Are you in banking ? Or if not where do you live man in a cave ?

You are asking for evidence? Did they not use your money and all our money to bail them self out from the %*&^*&^( they put us all thorough? Again how many people lost their homes ? Jobs ? Maybe lives as consequence of what bank did to them ?

Seriously you need to open your eyes and I am saying this with respect I do not mean to be rude.

Read about what happened in Iceland http://www.commondreams....ity-and-its-been-success

This is how bankers should be treated as criminals exactly the same way as in Iceland. IMO they are thief's and they should go where thief s belongs to - jail .

Its not evil but the entire money system causes suffering. Everyday people working for the dollar at the cost of their life. Banks are just at the forefront. Printing money out of thin air, scraping money off people, foreclosures...did psychedelics show you any of this or did it tell you that the banking and money systems are completely ok? Also Ram how do you know for sure human nature isn't changing already? Maybe these systems need to be dismantled and they are already in their "cancer stage" read the book cancer stage of capitalism good luck

This got posted a little while ago and everyone ignored it, but I think it's pretty relevant to this discussion -

Making over $75k/year does not make you happier
There's a bit of nuance to this that I can get into later, but the gist of it is, once you have your basic needs met, and enough left over to feel financially secure, more money doesn't do anything to increase your mood or sense of well-being.

The US is probably the most capitalist country in the world, and it doesn't appear to be doing anything for our overall sense of well-being. The central premise of American economic culture is that satisfaction can be attained by the acquisition of money and/or material goods. Anyone who's spent time in a shopping mall in the US knows what I'm talking about. Despite all of the wealth that get generated by the banking industry and other capitalist enterprises (all of which goes to the very top) The US has one of the highest GDPs but consistently ranks as less happy than other developed nations
(That's from 2010, but a check of the most recent World Happiness Report shows that the US still ranks below even Mexico, a country wracked by horrific violence, in terms of happiness).

The US also has some of the highest rates of prescriptions for antidepressants and antianxiety meds, and rates of prescription have been increasing consistantly since the drugs entered the market)

Regardless of whether you think that American capitalism is somehow 'intrinsically evil,' in some kind of cosmic moral sense, it seems pretty obvious that it is not working for the benefit of most people living in this country. We're more depressed, anxious, less happy, have absurdly high levels of wealth inequality (which correlates with is associated with decreased health, well-being, and poorer quality of life for the lower classes), and our political system is failing to serve the people it claims to represent. .

The most basic example of all of this is that, during the height of the foreclosure crisis, there were more empty, locked homes than there were homeless people in the United States: we could have solved homelessness multiple times over, but those homeless folks remained homeless, and all those houses fell apart and went un-lived in.

Whatever we're doing now, we could be doing better.

Bhutan has a really interesting idea, trying to maximize Gross National Happiness instead of Gross Domestic Product. Putting the well-being of the citizens of a country ahead of the generation of economic wealth seems like a really good direction we could be going as a country, and I don't think the banking industry will ever do that.

Blessings
~ND

PS: Psybin, I have a feeling that the 'transexual' comment may have been a shot at me - so let me just say that (even though I am not, in fact, transexual and never will be), there are a lot of really great trans and genderqueer people out there who you'd probably really like and get along with, if you could move past your biasis. I hope one day you get to make those friends.

^^^

Exactamente!

Timely article here, about why bankers are definitely not your friends...

But evil? I think any system that prioritizes abstraction over blood, sweat and sap, and where a single key-press can earn more than a lifetime collecting garbage fifty hours a week, has to try extra-hard to not be evil. In this, they have failed to date.

And now:

TPP and TTIP

Need I go on?

To me our culture is perverted on the back of the materialism that capitalism pushes. In order for people to live decent, they need good food, clean water and a decent shelter suitable for their environment. Food from what I've read, can grow from the ground, and with the right collection and distillation methods clean water can be set up cheaply, and housing with materials considered can likewise be easily affordable, after all it is kind of a necessity.

So that being said, why are there people dying from morbid obesity complications in the same world with children starving? Why are there people drinking poisoned water when CocaCola will sell you your own tap water in a plastic bottle? And why are there more homes in the U.S. that are unoccupied than there are homeless families?

The answers, greed, a by product of competitive capitalism. I used to be big into capitalism, but upon inspection it is a flawed system. It's people using force to control resources, that have become the problem. People who control the oil set up the economy because all goods that get shipped require oil to travel and they manipulate the prices to suit their needs. Certain resources can be made "scarce" to facilitate profiteering because when things are scarce the law of supply and demand inflates the value of the scarce items. This has been done artificially to manipulate the markets. The people who work and manipulate the economy are all tied into this, likewise lobbyists run on money which pushes greedy interests into politics which later becomes law. The real truth is that the U.S. is an oligarchy hierarchically run by those with money and industry (Google the Princeton Oligarchy Study regarding the US, it's well documented) . The banking system is at the cornerstone of this. Also note the highest rates that we've seen of sociopaths in society are with politicians, CEOs and wall street bankers (sociopaths are typically regarded as evil people, because they are a perversion of human nature, they are 100% motivated by selfish interests and care mostly nothing for other people)

I've read that some people like to compare the competitive aspect of capitalism with human nature, in an evolutionary kind of metaphor, but what utter bullshit. That type of competitive energy is the product of animal sexual dominancy that you see when one deer overpowers the next during a rut. That's a more primitive side of human nature. The side that a sociopath expresses the most. The real nature of a human being is more cooperative, we work together in a society to thrive. Look at how the ideginous lived at one with nature, sharing food and telling stories around campfires when men with guns and Bibles, put up fences, cut down trees and pissed on patches of land that they had no right to claim other than the fact that they had guns and a man in a legal office writting words on a peice of paper giving them title to "own" land that indigenous people felt could not be owned. I know economics and politics is more complicated than my quick metaphors, but my point is, what is really human nature? A tribe of people who bond over the environment sharing resources for the good of their community making no claim to land other than a place to rest their head, or men who claim acres of land utilizing the territorial piss of legal agreements to claim ownership of space, that is defended and backed by law which is always backed by the barrel of a gun. I strongly feel that capitalism is not a byproduct of human nature, but a perversion of it. Egocentrism at its highest point. There are better ways to live than the rat race it creates

Wow, you're all making some wonderful arguments! I am starting to run out of suitable responses. But I'll keep trying to offer some.



I would argue that capital systems have greatly improved standards of living on Earth, albeit not for everyone. Motivation (for money and power) spurs innovation. If everyone was completely satisfied and could just sit around in nature all day, believe me that would get boring. I know it might seem nice to people like us who have to work everyday, but don't we go on and on about how there is enlightenment to be found in work? Isn't it fun to work on a tough project and do a helpful job you enjoy?

There are definitely problems and inefficiencies with banking and the capital markets. But the wonderful thing is that inefficiencies can be taken advantage of within capitalism. If you are not happy with a current system/corporation/policy, then either make your own or use a different one! I know this is not feasible a lot of the times, but it's the idea. I like to think that we drift toward better and better equilibria as time goes on.



Yes I posted that link a while back. After some consideration, I do not personally think $75k is suitable at all, especially if one plans to raise a family. Yet the median household income is only about $50k! With rent, food, healthcare, transportation, energy, loans, and entertainment I would estimate that a single person needs to make an upwards of at least $100k to be comfortable. But this could be argued all day and the point remains; there is a limited amount of wealth increases that will continue to improve the quality of someone's life.

The US is not in fact the most economically free/capitalist country in the world (see page 8 ). The top five most economically free areas are Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland, and Mauritius, and both Switzerland and New Zealand are in the top ten for happiest countries in the world! The US ranks 12 on the economic freedom list and 17 on the happiness list. I think it is a common notion that we are the most capitalist country since we have the highest GDP, but there is still a ton of government regulation, and a lot of GDP is just government spending.

I would argue that the US is a place where business and regulation intersect way, way too much and in an improper fashion. I am a personal fan of socially regulated capitalism, but campaign contributions and burgeoning corporate power are huge issues which I think play large roles in the unhappiness and anxiety that many people in the US face.

I understand the tendency here is to distrust both corporations and the government, and I agree that collusion between these entities causes great strife, as they can work to keep wages low and continue giving bailouts when poor economic decisions are made. This also largely contributes to the wealth inequality problem, as wealthy people can influence the government enough to solely protect their own wealth.

This boils down to: the government should interfere with the capital markets, rather than the other way around! But this is an age old problem, as money and power are so heavily related. Great post overall though Nathanial. We can always improve, and I like to see capitalism as a system defined by instability and constant change, which I think we clearly need in the US.



Our system does seem absurd when you put it like that! But let me ask, if you start out with 1000 people and give them all $1,000,000, I guarantee that at the end of ten years, some of the people would have invested and worked hard with the money to become super wealthy, while others would have blown it all and been on the streets in the first year.

The point is that different people have different views on what the best economic decision for themselves will be. If I lose all my money in the casino, do you blame me, or the casino for existing in the first place? The casino exists because it is legal and attracts people to spend money, and I spent money there because I chose to in exchange for excitement and possible winnings.

The solution to the inefficiencies you point out are giving everyone a fair chance to succeed in life. But this is very difficult, and it is exactly what we need to focus on, as a planet, going forward. No one wants to be put into such an absurd, inefficient position, but fortunately the government has the potential to help, in theory.



The last part of your post is awesome and truly makes me question my own views. My response regards standards of living; while Native American lifestyles might be attractive to some (especially entheogenic drug users like ourselves), I would argue that the Western lifestyle has provided much, much higher standards of living and technological advancements than the primal, bonding lifestyles could have ever offered. And my hope is that one day technology can help us solve many of the problems we create for ourselves!

Finally there are still bonding and groups in capitalism. Think of the most basic economic unit in postmodern societies - the household! You are bonded to the people in your family and usually people give up wealth for the benefit of their family. The same can be said for one's school, religious group, or even business (all things that people exchange their precious time for). I do not think everything needs to be so cutthroat, but I think it's reasonable that there has to be an exchange of effort to receive more of what you desire, which theoretically capitalism should provide.

Switzerland and New Zealand also have significantly more comprehensive social safety nets than the USA. I can't find any ranking of 'most capitalist,' or 'most socialist' or anything like that, but I feel like the economic freedom index is not the most appropriate index, at least for this discussion (I'm also not sure how seriously I take a report from the Fraser Institute - they're historically pretty partisan, in a conservative/libertarian direction).

Capitalism does not necessarily equate with freedom (I would say that would be anarchism), but rather, the idea of private property and ownership of capital, and although I have not lived in either country, I get the sense that the US places a much greater emphasis, culturally, on private property, capital, and the pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps mentality.

Blessings
~ND

Here's what I think is going to happen (in a nutshell) as far as technology and it's role in solving the problems with capitalism.

Personally since I feel that capitalism will persist to some degree, it needs to evolve to a better capacity to serve people. Considering that this is truly a global phenomena, where resources in Africa impact technology designed in the US and put together in China, any notions of "down-with-the-system" are completely ridiculous. There is no coup that can solve this. Here's how I think it can evolve though.

Spreading technology to create self sustaining homes. Energy efficient designs and systems that generate their own electricity on site (solar is getting cheaper and better, likewise I've read of woman in Africa that designed a system that can turn urine into electricity, and in Japan I think they are using a similar principle to turn sewage to electricity). Systems that collect their own water, such as cisterns or wells. There are people that have built homes out of old tires and cans, and many other types of materials to build self sustaining homes very cheaply. Not here to argue pros and cons about designs, but I know its quite doable. Likewise educating people and slowly building to create our own food, such as with greenhouses, hydroponics etc. There are many good people working on this. Spreading these technologies and showing people how truly freeing that self reliance is. It will open up new avenues for people. Once a person's shelter, food and water, the basic needs are taken care of, what is it that people would work for? There would be no squabbling for the basic needs and thus that primitive survival aspect of our nature will have evolved.

Once we gain enough traction to have a person's basic needs taken care of, people won't be having to run the rat race just to keep babies feed, they will have time to educate themselves better (the cornerstone of great society is education in my opinion)and to create things, such as art and better technologies.

That's where capitalism would still thrive, people need to build things, and one person can't build a spaceship in his garage. Also people would need a means to exchange goods with each other, and barter wouldn't work (unless 'I'll trade you three guitars for a chicken and that MP3 player' sounds like a good deal, then whatever)

As far as this technology goes, information is spreading quite quickly through the internet, the cat already is quite out of the bag. Also it's a pure matter of economics. Self sufficiency is economical. And I think there are enough kind smart people (Bill Gates seems like a sweetheart in my opinion (you know with helping distribute free education online)) out there to help facilitate this better world. Non of this will happen super quickly, but will all be chipped at over time. One person sets up their own herb garden, the next person sets up solar panels at his hunting camp. The rat race, will exist for a while, but once people find the real cheddar (what's really important in life), we won't need any more of that petty fighting with ourselves, and as it picks up steam, there will be less a tendency for sociopathy in society and it will move at an exponential rate.

One step at a time though and the work will need to be put it. The people who don't want to work towards the goal of elevating our species beyond this squabbling will die in the rat race (a dynamic of evolution). I feel this eventual goal is quite possible. I'd like to see a good glimpse in my lifetime.

To quote a good song "You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one."

Hippies. Lots,of hippies.

Good, go. Why would anyone want to listen to a bigot like you splurge hate rants on the forum like this? What is wrong with you?

I'm just going to leave this here..

https://www.youtube.com/...;list=PL137CFF399FABD8B6

.. and then have a little rant.

This isn't far fetched conspiracy theory, this is sadly how the current financial system operates.
Condemnation without investigation being the height of ignorance, put down your hateforks and actually take the time to consider that there may actually be something to this, before dismissing it as another liberal (apparently a dirty word over there in america) nutjob concept.
A sign of a truly intelligent mind is the ability to entertain an idea without accepting it.
You do not have to accept it, but by deciding you already know its bullshit without sincerely considering the other side of the debate is closed mindedness at its apex, something that one would have thought to be the antithesis of this community.. (sigh). The only thing you risk by doing so is changing your mind.

Usury is a problem, unsustainable economic models based on ceaselessly rapacious unending "growth" and wasteful resource consumption are a problem. Bury your heads in the sand all you like, it won't stop the house of cards from falling down.
Sadly, paradigms being what they are, the fish ask "what's water?" whilst ignorant of the fact they are swimming in it.

Banks seem evil because they are capitalizing on your fear of your money being stolen by greedy people. So if they are leaching off the fact that your scared then they tend to come off kind of evil and leachey. I know it seems crazy not to want to put all that money in a bank but, hey, the folks in Canada are all leaving their doors unlocked so maybe it's not such a far out idea that we might all just be a bit paranoid. Maybe all that paranoia is also feeding a lot of other negative energies and just exacerbating the cut-throat air that is permeating capitalist cultures.

Ram is this all your own thinking? Or is someone else thinking for you? I'm curious to your background and why you are defending the capitalist system so strongly even in the face of such obvious evidences of its psychosis. I'm really interested.

So I didn't read through the thread, only because I want to tell you what I think without being effected by others' opinions. First off, What I see is a debt pyramid. Everyone is in debt, governments, institutions and people, and the currency is based on it. But I don't think it's some conspiracy, rather just the current result of a long line of events and flawed ideas which have unfolded.

The entire system is completely unhealthy, every time one debt market is exhausted, because once the debt can't theoretically be paid back, the value of bonds based on it falls (with the exception of US treasuries, they're different, because they are paid back in dollars, which the borrower freely prints)(how long can this continue? Idk), a new market must be found to keep the old debt afloat.

The worse part is the risk management, and forecast models used by institutions, they're based on the past, extrapolated into the future, with the assumption that future events will never deviate from what has already occurred. It's insane. And it's the same in the stock market, this is how analysts make their forecasts. It's why the herd never sees the crash coming and they never see the bottom.

I recommend everyone interested in this to read Nassim Nicholas Taleb's books, "the black swan," "fooled by randomness," and
"Antifrafile." This guy is the greatest writer and philosopher alive in my opinion, he writes from experience.

Watch him talk about his "antifragile" concept, we need this sort of system, modeled after natural systems.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1NXaafTpVjM

I discovered taleb just before I discovered entheogens, his stuff opened my mind and you could credit him with kick starting my real education, his books were where I first heard of Benoit Mandelbrot and fractal geometry, he maps his ideas and the current system geometrically. Basically the old system of risk management is based on eclidian geometry, while risk in reality is fractal in nature, like everything else, with much more catastrophic loss possible during a rare event, than is allowed by current models. I hope I explained that correctly.

The system is unsustainable, both economically and ecologically, but I think we're going to figure something out, because we have to.

Don't forget the Khan Academy. They have a good section about economics.

https://www.khanacademy....ance-domain/core-finance

It's probably a good idea to get educated in economics as a matter of self-defense, because Occupy has obviously failed and the next crash is about to happen. If you believe http://www.zerohedge.com/ , it's coming next week.




http://www.zerohedge.com...s-corporate-bonds-lehman
http://www.zerohedge.com...ay-china-sending-warning

Well spacexplorer the reasoning behind this thread is multifaceted. I suppose one of the main reasons I like to post and discuss is to help myself understand certain issues more, and I also like to record the views of Nexians for future reference. Many times when I am perusing a random forum for information, I start to think about how people there participated and worked really hard to put up interesting, free content for others to advance their knowledge.

I also wanted to play devil's advocate (just a little) to try and extract more legitimate responses from people. It is very easy in many Internet forums, especially ones centered around drugs, to have a mutual appreciation society (better term for circlejerk) about how evil the government, banks, and other large institutions are. But if psychedelics have taught me one thing it is that nothing is entirely one way or another. While things may be mainly good (according to most people's moral perception), there are always bad parts of consequences and vice versa. So I think it is good to get a full picture and not see everything so black-and-white.

While the thoughts I've written about have been my own, I will admit that many were inspired by my father, which shouldn't be surprising. He wasn't very book-smart as a young person; he hardly graduated high school. But he is good at one thing, and that's selling! He started his own business at the age of 15 and spent the rest of his life as an entrepreneur. He rose up from a dirty flea market to owning and operating a pretty big business that has allowed him to become prosperous. The business also provides a very useful service and gets wonderful reviews from people.

So my family tends to lean towards capitalism because of what it has allowed us. We aren't really that rich, but neither are we the dream story of an immigrant family who rose up against difficult circumstances and oppression. We are just people who give 100% every day and have been rewarded for it. And we have used debt responsibly for the business and our home. (Sometimes I think that the people who make all of those YouTube videos about how evil debt is, are actually in a lot of debt themselves!! )

People are just different; some are lazy, some are willing to work hard, some are intelligent, some not so much. What I love about capitalism is its instability; it is ever-changing. While there are some forms of systemic oppression, I task the government with solving those problems. Otherwise, I think it is great how you can work hard, choose what you want to do with your life, and pursue it freely.

Maybe this is all false and I have a skewed view of how the world really works. But from what I can tell by the people I know, which I guess is my truest sample size, is that working hard allows for freedom and fulfillment. And there is nothing wrong, in my opinion, with people who choose alternative lifestyles. I do not condemn monks, welfare people, or hippies who get stoned all day. I believe that as long as you don't hurt other people or restrict your children, you can live however you want to live with no judgment. I truly believe that the US has allowed this freer lifestyle for many people.

We do need harsh critics to keep improving the system. There is ever-present inequality that needs to be dealt with and people who try to take advantage of the system. But theoretically and many times in practice, I applaud the system, capitalism, for what it has given humans. As I said before, money is a great motivator and spurs innovation. Many of the great things we have today are motivated and supported by money. But a big issue with money in my opinion is how so many people have such a fetish for it. If you don't believe me, hold up a $100 bill in a room full of people and look at how everyone starts squirming. This motivates bad and perverted behaviors... But I believe it was Marx who said that getting rid of money would do no good, as it would just be replaced by work-time coupons of something of the sort. So it's a necessary evil if we want streamlined systems of exchange.

Finally I have chosen to go work in finance myself. I live in a constant state of dichotomy because of my occupational goals (high finance) and my personal beliefs (pursuit of happiness for all), but I do not think it has to be this way. Mathematical finance is my niche, and there is more money to be made in it than in any other business I see. Since I have the skills to do the job, I think that I would be better suited to have the money than a lot of other people. I have very philanthropic goals.

I do not require much more than I have right now to live happily. Yet I know that money corrupts people. So I wanted to get everyone's view here so I can have a clearer view of my own life and goals going forward, and try to keep this discussion going internally as a checks-and-balances of my beliefs.



Thanks for the recommendation BFP, I am going to get The Black Swan and read it. I have heard this guy's name in some other financial books I have read, and since it is very possible that I will end up working in risk management (as soon as next summer), I should probably read this.

Hmmmm, Thanks for your honest response.