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'There's no such thing as a free lunch' ... and other right-wing fallacies

POSTED BY: 1KIKI
UPDATED: Sunday, October 7, 2012 13:38
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Sunday, October 7, 2012 12:26 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


A free lunch is something you didn't work for, getting more than you earned.

If there were no such thing as a free lunch life would be impossible. I could only eat the calories I'd expended to find them. Anything else would be 'free', and, supposedly, non-existent. But I would die under those circumstances. I couldn't carry the overhead of just being alive, or of growing, repairing, or reproducing. Even plants, viewed as being the only non-consumption form of life on the planet, and so the basis for all other life, are making use of the abundant free energy shining down on them for the having.

The entire 3.6 billion years of continuous life on this planet is a continuous process of having more than you 'earn'.

And yet, the idea of this planet and its life being meager and hostile is a widespread social assumption, used to justify the brutality of one human against another, and of humans against the planet.

Social Darwinism is another assumption. It assumes that life is a deadly fight between individuals and groups, that winning the fight is key to survival. Another is that capitalism is a natural system, rather than man-made.

These ideas do fall before simple observation and logic. And yet, we believe them, structure our society on them, react to them as if they were real. And so we do what we do. Which leads me to ...


http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=53226





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Sunday, October 7, 2012 1:38 PM

FREMDFIRMA



Well hell kiddo, Kropotkins MUTUAL AID blew that one up some time ago, too bad so few have read it.

On the "Free Lunch" note though, I totally owned some jerk at a cafe in Ann Arbor over that one, he was on that ramble, rather vociferously and obnoxiously if the reactions of the folks at the table with him were any indicator, and I crept up behind him, waited for a pause in the ranting, and softly said "I call bullshit." and placed my brown bag on the table next to his elbow and waltzed away as the folks he was ranting to had a good laugh.
Not only a free lunch, but a good one too - organic no-transfat peanut butter and real jelly with no HFCS on bread with no HFCS, fresh fruit, yadda - I sincerely hope he enjoyed it, though I doubt it moved his preciously held beliefs an inch.
Was worth it to me though, just for the look on his face.

-Frem
PS - HFCS.. in BREAD??!!!, seriously WTF?!
I had a bit of a meltdown in the bread aisle over that one, but finally found some hot dog buns without any, argh!

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