Communism.

Originally posted by googlefudge
@ rwingett

ok, So you postulate a Hutterite society, as the thing we should be aiming for.

Lets say your dream comes real, lets look at (for example) the USA.

The USA is now covered in a patchwork of farming communities who have somehow
peacefully allocated the viable farming land equally amongst the population.

Now set off the Yellowstone ...[text shortened]... growing area?

How do you make it work with how people are, not how you wish they would be?

I do not presume to have answers to any such hypothetical questions. How should I know how we're going to respond to some mythical volcano? There are innumerable disaster scenarios that could conceivably crop up. It's farcical to think that you can prepare for all of them, or that your technology will somehow shield you from them. What I do know is that there is a disaster looming on our immediate horizon. Our rising levels of consumption, fueled by our consumerist society and our ever greater levels of technology, are rapidly becoming unsustainable. I think it would behoove us to prepare for disaster no. 1 first and worry about your hypothetical mega-volcanoes once we've successfully dealt with it.

Originally posted by rwingett
I do not presume to have answers to any such hypothetical questions. How should I know how we're going to respond to some mythical volcano? There are innumerable disaster scenarios that could conceivably crop up. It's farcical to think that you can prepare for all of them, or that your technology will somehow shield you from them. What I do know is that the ...[text shortened]... first and worry about your hypothetical mega-volcanoes once we've successfully dealt with it.

It's not a mythical volcano, its a real volcano that will at some point, possibly not too distant,
but very probably in the next few thousand years, erupt.

I don't disagree that we have issues to overcome, but your solution to those problems leaves
us incapable of solving all the others.

You are not postulating a short term solution, you are arguing for a long term adjustment for
which long term issues need to be addressed.

There is no point in saving ourselves from an imminent disaster by enacting solutions that doom
us in the longer term.

We need solutions that both solve the short term problem and leave options on the table for
solving the next problem down the line.

You say that the Hutterite society should be emulated world wide, with permanent effect,
ie it's the end goal.
So I ask questions about how we deal with problems that WILL arise at some point in the future
that to be viable your posited solution would have to deal with.

If you don't have any solutions for those problems, then your short term solution is no good.

Penguin said it very nicely (although I disagree somewhat with the analysis of hunter gatherers)
in his post in the "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race" thread.

I quote again here.

"In many ways, you are right.

People in hunter-gatherer societies tend to be more content.
They tend to have more leisure time.
They have a smaller impact on the environment.

The invention of agriculture certainly changed all that.

However...

Hunter-gatherer societies have the same level of control over their environment as any other animal species.

The vast majority of species that have ever lived on this planet are now extinct. Most of those species have not left descendants. They are evolutionary dead ends. As are the vast majority of species alive today.

If we remained hunter-gatherers, we would be just one more of those species, no more notable than any other. If we wipe ourselves out through anthropological global warming, or get wiped out through an asteroid strike, we could still be said to be no more notable than any other animal. The biosphere will recover and in a few million years there would be little evidence that we ever existed, footprints on the moon and the Voyager probes notwithstanding.

The attributes of intelligence, self awareness and problem-solving though have the potential to make us notable. There is the potential that our descendants could become independent of our home planet, solar system and even galaxy. This possibility is largely due to farming.

Basically, farming enables us to be different from all the other species (and was essential for that). Yes we are in trouble, but we were even more doomed (in the long term) before farming. At least now there is the possibility of saving ourselves.

--- Penguin."

Originally posted by googlefudge
It's not a mythical volcano, its a real volcano that will at some point, possibly not too distant,
but very probably in the next few thousand years, erupt.

I don't disagree that we have issues to overcome, but your solution to those problems leaves
us incapable of solving all the others.

You are not postulating a short term solution, you are arg ...[text shortened]... ing. At least now there is the possibility of saving ourselves.

--- Penguin.[/i]"[/b]

As you observed elsewhere, the Hutterites do not reject technology like the Amish. They use quite a bit of it as is appropriate to their situation. The key phrase here is 'appropriate technology.' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appropriate_technology

If the Hutterite mode of social organization were to become the norm, they would obviously have to do quite a bit of things themselves that they now rely on the outside world to do for them. What level of technology they may eventually choose to adopt is beyond my powers to divine. It may well include research into...oh, shall we say...an "advanced volcano appeasement laser"®, or some other technological falderal.

Originally posted by rwingett
As you observed elsewhere, the Hutterites do not reject technology like the Amish. They use quite a bit of it as is appropriate to their situation. The key phrase here is 'appropriate technology.' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appropriate_technology

If the Hutterite mode of social organization were to become the norm, they would obviously have to do quite ...[text shortened]... all we say...an "advanced volcano appeasement laser"®, or some other technological falderal.

Well obviously an "advanced volcano appeasement laser"® [A.V.A.L.] is silly, but ok lets go with that for a bit.

Presumably given we don't yet have one, inventing an A.V.A.L. is hard and resource consuming.
So one or even several of your small communities can't develop one on their own.
So this would have to be a problem tackled by a group larger than the few immediately surrounding the volcano.

How many groups should get involved?
What resources should they supply?
How do they get compensated for the resources they didn't spend on growing their crops because they participated in this project?
Also,
As the relevant physics required for the A.V.A.L. might only be found by blue sky research into a number of apparently completely unrelated areas
(A very common phenomenon in science, especially on the harder problems) how do you support the continuous ongoing science that gives the
break-through's you need to complete the project (and any others required).


A better, actual real world example, is asteroid deflection.
At some point (assuming something else doesn't wipe it out first) your society will face an asteroid impact.
The resources and planning needed for deflecting an asteroid are immense.
How do your tiny 200 person villages get together and collectively solve the problem?
You need a much much bigger society to do it.
The 'evil' of society, specialisation you came up with is key here...
If everyone (pretty much0 is a farmer, and spends their time working the land, then there is no one to do the science needed to work out how to do this.
And even if you designate a few people to do it, they might not be the right people, the right person/people are much more likely to be in the majority
still farming.
The freeing of the majority from having to work the fields all day is what allowed the technological progress we have.

Also, as you/I say they use modern agricultural equipment (which runs on oil)...
Are you really suggesting that these tiny little villages each individually make all the equipment they need?
How do they get the minerals required to build them, or the oil to run them?
If every little village has to have manufacturing capability, then how much land did you just waste with massively over redundant manufacturing capability?

As I say, your little societies use far more land per person than a person living in a well designed city.
Assuming there was enough viable agricultural land for you society to work, which there isn't, you have to destroy all the wilderness, the forests and plains,
to make fields for crops.
You have lost every single economy of scale, and efficiency of design in your society.

I say again, they can only function as they do because they are supported and protected by the bigger (and I hate to say this) better run society they are
based in.