
Beyond Cynicism: America Fumbles Towards Kafka’s Castle - bonanza_hacker
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/beyond-cynicism-america-fumbles-towards-kafkas-castle/
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ggm
_Their main mental block is their belief in infinite industrial growth on a
finite planet, an idea so powerfully foolish that it obviates their standing
as technocrats._

This is the Erlich/Simons bet. It's not that the author is wrong to say there
is a limit to growth, it's just that it's preposterous to assert we're close
to it. We are not close to it in any useful sense. It's not even 200 years
off: it's beyond.

We will have normal cyclical boom and bust many times before we reach it. The
rape of the Amazon and they CO2 burden are more worrisome, but as limits
represent a different reason to clamp consumption and growth.

 _My theory, for what it’s worth, is that the civil rights legislation of 1964
and ’65, which removed legal barriers to full participation in national life,
induced considerable anxiety among black citizens over the new disposition of
things, for one reason or another. And that is exactly why a black separatism
movement arose as an alternative at the time, led initially by such
charismatic figures as Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael._

I don't know about the second clause but I believe differently about the first
clause. Removing the legal impediment did not obligate society to change,
black America received as much systemic instituionalized racism after the law
changed as before, it was now simply illegal. Freeing the slave (btw, largely
they freed themselves) didn't give them work and passing the civil rights laws
didn't magically end racism or provide opportunities.

