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We're overconsuming more than we're overpopulated. It's probably possible to reach sustainability with our current population if we curtailed consumption, but our consumption driven economy would have to change at a fundamental level. We'd need to impose strict taxes on waste and heavily subsidize efficiency while redistributing wealth from the ultra polluting ultra rich.

Overpopulation myths distract us from the real culprits of our unsustainable system. We need to cull the fat cats before we cull the masses. Population control should always be the last resort, while redistribution should always be the first.

No

AA relies on religion and finding god to treat a medical problem like addiction. I don't think it's the best example my dude.

Yeah! Kropotkin argues a couple points:

• People are generally pretty good at self-organizing to solve problems, and have done so effectively in small communities for thousands of years.

• We have the technology* and productive power to ensure everyone enjoys a decent standard of living.

• Much of the scarcity we face today* is artificially created and entirely avoidable if we produce to meet needs instead of maximize profits.

• Things like laziness, corruption, and greed can largely be addressed by ensuring that all of a person's needs are guaranteed to be met. Many people we currently* call "lazy" are either stuck in a hyper-specialized job that they can't leave because they need to sell their labor to survive, or unmotivated because much of the wealth they produce is absorbed by someone else. And people tend to take more than they need more often than not because they are stuck competing with their fellow man for resources instead of cooperating for the common good.

He also does some back-of-the-napkin math to show that it takes less than a year's worth of labor to produce everything a household needs for a year, and that the remaining labor time of that year should be open for people to cultivate different skills and pursue their passions. He argues that the distinction between what we today call blue-collar and white-collar work is unhealthy, and that everyone should do a bit of both.

His central thesis IMO seems to be that in the event of a socialist revolution, people shouldn't be afraid to immediately start doing socialism. Take inventory of the food & start giving it to the hungry, figure out how many empty houses the community has & start housing the homeless, stop growing cash crops / producing niche luxury goods and start growing food / manufacturing necessities until everyone's needs are met. He sternly warns against half-measures: maintaining the state's use of violence or keeping track of some kind of currency or propping up political leaders are all things he claims will spell the end of a revolution before it gets off the ground.

I really loved the book. I feel like it provided a great example of what communism could (and IMO should) look like without all the baggage of so-called communist states like China and the USSR.

*= The book was written in the late 1800s. I think a lot of it holds up really well and some points seemed like they really called events that would happen in the next hundred years. That being said, it's probably not as airtight today as it may have been in 1894.

That is a good point, but I would consider resources needed to maintain stability versus resources needed to achieve stability. Metaphorically, it's easy to stand on top of a mountain, but it's a lot harder to climb it from the bottom. And the mountain gets taller the longer you wait.

Once you're at the top, you can lend a hand to the people still making the climb without worrying about being pulled back down.

The most vital thing isn't doing everything the hard way - just being smart about doing it all yourself. It's the sense that freedom is a function of actual independence, and actual independence is a consequence of ability.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/adventure/outdoors/a24399/the-art-of-staying-alive/

agriculture is the act of cultivating soil and producing crops...

should I go on or is that a good illustrative example of how the original request is so far reaching and unspecific as to be functionally useless.

It's like asking "how do I make a game?"

a video game? a board game? a playground game? a card game? all of which require skills, disciplines, planning, research and understanding of mechanics that no one can summarize even in a single full length book, let alone a forum post reply.