Plan B

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Seedle


Because we have cars. There are plenty of empty buildings about, at least in the midwest. If the **** hits the fan, people can move.

There's dynamics to consider. You'd be lucky to find a vacant building. I don't think most people would be able to find one.

[SlowwHand]

You must be joking. Homes and retail space are vacant to the max. Well, the max so far.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
You must be joking. Homes and retail space are vacant to the max. Well, the max so far.

Vacancy rates are maybe 10% max in some areas.

[Seedle]

Originally posted by Kidicious


Vacancy rates are maybe 10% max in some areas.

Maybe where you are. In Memphis, there's so much space available they tear buildings down for the hell of it. Of course, this is due in large part to the fact that they build new 10 bay shopping centers across the street from 10 year old 10 bay shopping centers that are already 3/4 empty. But my opinion on American development practices is neither here nor there. Point is there is plenty of empty space. And even where there isn't, there is. Homes, especially new homes, are gigantic these days. Even the entry level homes have more square footage than a lot of homes of the mid-twentieth century, in my experience. Time to take in boarders.

[onodera]

Back to the topic.
Lancer, communism's urge to expand is natural. You can produce a lot of stuff in the US alone, but as the standard of living improves, you're going to need more resources and more people to satisfy rapidly diversifying needs. Capitalism uses globalization, communism uses a single planned economy to achieve that.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Lancer
Miniature lighter than air solar fan powered blimps. Lots of em.

Everybody needs to get a blimp.

[Elok]

Well, Plan B for women is an emergency contraceptive. I imagine the equivalent for me would be to somehow register my sperm with Witness Protection. "No, we were nowhere near that uterus on the night in question. Must've been somebody else's."

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Seedle


Maybe where you are. In Memphis, there's so much space available they tear buildings down for the hell of it. Of course, this is due in large part to the fact that they build new 10 bay shopping centers across the street from 10 year old 10 bay shopping centers that are already 3/4 empty. But my opinion on American development practices is neither here nor there. Point is there is plenty of empty space. And even where there isn't, there is. Homes, especially new homes, are gigantic these days. Even the entry level homes have more square footage than a lot of homes of the mid-twentieth century, in my experience. Time to take in boarders.

I didn't consider people living in abandoned shopping malls, but right now the US home vacancy rate is around 3%. That's up from around 1.5% normally because of the meltdown. I guess that will probably get worse, but there definitely won't be enough vacant homes for everyone to move to.

[Lancer]

Originally posted by onodera
Back to the topic.
Lancer, communism's urge to expand is natural. You can produce a lot of stuff in the US alone, but as the standard of living improves, you're going to need more resources and more people to satisfy rapidly diversifying needs. Capitalism uses globalization, communism uses a single planned economy to achieve that.

We don't need much that we don't have here. What we need we can trade for raw materials such as foodstuffs, coal, cotton, and tobacco.

The Sovs couldn't produce much of these things because they were repressive idiots. Our communism would be much different, representative communism. Also I see no point in nationalizing stuff which is not somehow related to production, such as homes and small farms.

[Lancer]

Originally posted by Dauphin


Everybody needs to get a blimp.

Thanks Dauphin.

[Heraclitus]

When all else fails try communism.



I personally think a New New Deal would be sufficient to solve your problems.

[Agathon]

Re: Plan B

Far from me to rain on your communist parade, but you might want to think about this.

Originally posted by Lancer

My plan B would be to nationalize everything.

Look, you can't do this. There are many parts of the economy that do not require public ownership, and many of those where public ownership would be counterproductive. We don't yet have the technology to establish such a planned system on such a scale, and even if we did, it would take a long time to get it up and working.

Nationalize health care and most insurance, and nationalize heavy industry and educational institutions. Socialism has historically a pretty decent track record here. Regulate the rest for the time being.

Establish some sort of emergency act/ martial law. Pay off our debt around the world with worthless devalued dollars. Establish a new, totally controled currency not traded on the world market.

How are you going to pay for stuff? Are your companies going to accept payment in foreign currencies, or are you going to adopt a barter system?

I would nationalize all business and start a super WPA jobs program. The gov controled auto makers would only produce electric cars.

No.

Cars are insane. Cars have led your country to invest in infrastructure that is not sustainable in the long run. Changing to electricity is simply shuffling the cards around. What needs to be done is a national project, much like the Manhattan or Apollo projects, to focus on green technologies.

Part of this is a renewal of the urban design movement. Cities will have to be redesigned. Letting them grow in an uncontrolled or semi-uncontrolled fashion is insane, and has produced the current problems.

The US is the Suadi Arabia of coal, I'd double or tripple the mining of coal and set industry to building scrubbers to clean burn it.

/facepalm

Go nuclear.

Very basic food stuffs would be a right as soon as things were up and running until the rebuilt, controled economy gave the chance to work to everybody. Then the basics would not be free.

Why? The infrastructure is not there.

National health care to all who work or serve in the military or are retired or impaired.

Why not to everyone? It's cheaper.

Look, you need to face up to the main problem here. The American lifestyle is unsustainable. You might pull out of this crisis, or you might not, but it is a fact that has to be faced. Hoping that future technology will magically solve the problems is faith based politics. There is no indication it will.

This isn't going to hurt the urban poor, since they don't have much anyway, but it is going to hurt the "aspirational" part of the population, who are actively engaged in competitive consumption. There is a large part of the population for whom having nicer clothes, a nicer car, or a nicer house than the Jones's is the prime motivation in life. These people will not give up their childish games, their irrationality or their position in society lightly. You are going to have to stamp on them.. hard. Many of them have influential friends or are influential themselves. In order to break them, you will have to break these structures of influence. It is extremely hard, and revolutions are inevitably horrible things.

In part, recent US history has been a failure of the electorate to face up to the unsustainability of this model. Tax cuts are continually asked for and granted, but social spending is not cut, and the whole model is based on debt. There is no such thing as a free lunch, but the public just won't face up to that until they are made to. As I always say: the last thing that people are willing to give up often turns out to be the source of the problem.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Heraclitus
When all else fails try communism.



I personally think a New New Deal would be sufficient to solve your problems.

The New Deal really didn't work all that great, although we probably would have been worse off without it. What got us out of the depression was weapons armament.

[Q Classic]

To this administration, I think plan B is The Rapture.

I'm inclined to agree, in that if we're going down, we might as well use our nukes.

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by Kidicious


The New Deal really didn't work all that great, although we probably would have been worse off without it. What got us out of the depression was weapons armament.

ok

So start a non-nuclear WW3.