James A Donald's thesis that we should just enslave our women is very similar to the argument of Himmler when he argued that education for non-Germans be restricted to elementary school just enough to teach them to write their names and obey Germans. This was not an irrational policy for the Germans as a mechanism for maintaining control and eventually exterminating or "selectively reducing" a conquered people. However, it is entirely incompatible with self-determination, freedom, and ultimately progress. The strategy of enslaving women to force them to do what men want is morally identical. It is not irrational but it is very evil.

Ultimately embracing a strategy of might makes right as long as it is good for the local culture is one of stagnation. To use the analogy up-thread it transforms the world into a prison of competing gangs a zero-sum game. Such strategies will ultimately lose out over time to strategies of cooperation. In the end we are one species.

The solution is not to enslave other cultures or enslave our women or anyone else for that matter but to allow for the matching of of social rewards to healthy behavior so people willingly choose to do the right thing both for themselves for society as a whole not via force and oppression but via voluntary cooperation.

Mr. Donald' strongly disagrees with that concept that the emancipation of slaves, the end of dueling, blasphemy laws, the divine right of kings, woman’s suffrage and participation in the workforce represented progress. He is stuck in a primitive mindset failing to understand the actual nature of progress. 

His mindset is that Cycle #2 in the table below is ultimate progress and that everything that follows is bad. This is a rational view for someone who is highly optimized for warlordism and violence and wishes to engage in such things. However, it is a worldview that offers nothing but stagnation and ultimately slavery. 

Another option is to read Quantum Physics textbook, or read History books, read any books that talk about reality.

If you seek refuge in some Bronze Age or a 6-th century poetry, that is fine, just don't come out and say that this is 'the truth'.  Literature is fine as long as it is treated/interpreted as such.

Do you want to know the history of human kind, how it all started? Read this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Sapiens-Humankind-Yuval-Noah-Harari/dp/0062316095/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1485869151&sr=8-1&keywords=brief+history+of+human

For me, theology is a study of literature.  Like you, I have no interest in it.  

However, when someone comes out and says they have a talking, winged horse sitting on a unicorn in their backyard, I have to confront the BS.

Recently I have been thinking about the viability of gift economics. I am just starting to explore this issue and do not claim any deep knowledge on the topic. However, I have seen this concept in two different venues in just the last few weeks.

In "Sacred Economics" by Charles Eisenstein the author argues extensively for the viability of such an economics. I have just started to read the book. It is well written with an excellent critique of usury but I have not yet gotten to the heart of Mr. Eisenstein's argument.
http://sacred-economics.com/read-online/

Just today I found this attempt to codify gift economics into cryptocurrency. Vadim Frolov appears to be planning to roll this out in the form of an open sourced decentralized platform called thank-u
https://medium.com/@vadim.frolov/thank-u-value-and-money-redefined-on-blockchain-to-fix-ad-blocking-79de7a87231c#.yl9husm8r


This is a topic I will need to explore further. I plan to finish reading Mr. Eisenstein's book and follow the progress of this thank-u platform.

Let's say, the next year, no new land was discovered for apples, and indeed no one finds anything new to do.  Then there is no debt in the economy.  Everyone does the same thing, and pays and receives the same monies as before.  There needs not be exponential growth of debt.

[quote

No, the scenario doesn't require "eternal exponential growth to keep the system going". As long as I can grow and sell at least $105 worth of apples with a $100 loan, the scenario can continue indefinitely.

Bit bias here. Why you not encouraging him to get some Quran etc... CD's as well, so he can get a nice balanced view?

Let's say that you loan me $100 to grow apples and I have to pay you $1 a day until you get $105. Now, suppose you buy an apple for lunch from me each day, and then I use that dollar to pay you for the day. With that single dollar, I can repay my loan completely.

The fallacy of the not-enough-money-to-pay-interest argument it ignores the fact that money is used to transfer value and it can be used to transfer value over and over again.

Singapore's plea to its people: Won’t you please have more children?
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2017/0129/Singapore-s-plea-to-its-people-Won-t-you-please-have-more-children

Versus

Israel has the highest birth rate in the developed world.
http://www.businessinsider.com/israel-has-the-highest-birth-rate-in-the-developed-world-and-thats-becoming-a-problem-2015-9

A week after the Inauguration of Donald Trump, politically active women across America could choose to make themselves heard at two major rallies revolving around women's issues. They could attend a pro-choice, feminist march known as the Women's March or they could wait one week and attend the 44th annual pro-life, March for Life.

The marches had their similarities. Both marches were held in D.C. Both marches were heavily attended by women. And both marches attracted people from all over the country to participate. But each march was not made equal.

Being physically at the marches, it is easy to recognize differences between the two. In fact, some of the differences were downright stunning. Take a look for yourself, perhaps you will agree.

March for Life









The Women's March

As Singapore goes all out to reverse its ultralow fertility rate, many nations facing tough economic and social problems as the ranks of young people dwindle watch closely for lessons.

Singapore’s fertility rate is among the 10 lowest in the world. The average number of births per woman in 2015 was 1.24, according to government statistics. That’s well below the replacement rate of 2.1, the number of babies generally required to maintain a country’s current population level.
...
Singapore is an acute example of what has become a worldwide trend. Nearly half of all people now live in countries where women, on average, give birth to fewer than 2.1 babies. The Population Reference Bureau, a nonprofit research group in Washington, estimates the world population will reach 9.9 billion in 2050, up about 33 percent from an estimated 7.4 billion now. Yet the growth rate has steadily declined since its peak in the late 1960s.
...
Governments across the world, from Denmark to Japan, are struggling to come to terms with shrinking populations, and the implications for everything from supporting aging populations to growing the economy. But Singapore’s all-out approach stands out as one of the most ambitious.
...
Singapore has introduced a wide range of policies to help defray the costs of raising children in one of the world’s most expensive countries. Couples can get baby bonuses and housing priority, and men can take advantage of extended mandatory parental leaves – just like women. The government sponsors dating services to help with the first step: finding a partner.
...
The government’s aim is to help make parenthood as easy as possible. Aside from the housing initiative, it has also extended mandatory paid paternity leave from one to two weeks and even provides cash for babies. Families receive $14,000 (Singaporean; almost US$9,900) for their first child and are eligible for the same amount if they have a second; they receive S$20,000 for a third child, as well as for a fourth, and S$26,000 for each child beyond that.

The results have been mixed.
...
“I cannot solve the problem, and I have given up,” Lee (the country’s founding leader) wrote in his last book, published in 2013. “I have given the job to another generation of leaders. Hopefully, they or their successors will eventually find a way out.”
...
Josephine Teo (enior minister of state who oversees the National Population and Talent Division) often urges young people to look for love and settle down early, but even she has acknowledged a fine line between gentle persuasion and heavy-handed intrusiveness... "Millennial Singaporeans, who number nearly a million, are not about to start families because someone exhorts them to. If and when they decide to, it will likely be because they regard marriage and parenthood to be achievable, enjoyable, and celebrated.”

Although most people don’t realize it, Israel is the only Western country that has a positive birthrate

The average Israeli woman has three babies in her lifetime, nearly double the fertility rate for the rest of the industrialised countries in the OECD.

Today's population of 8.4 million is forecast to reach 15.6 million by 2059 and 20.6 million in a high case scenario.
...
there is no national discourse or recognition that a problem exists. On the contrary, government policies are geared to encouraging a high birth rate.

The reasons are various, from the biblical command "Be fruitful and multiply" to the death of six million Jews in the Holocaust, to fears of being outnumbered by Arabs.

Israeli government policy encourages population growth with benefits such as child allowances, free schooling from the age of three and funding for up to four in vitro fertility treatments a year.

He's been called the "French Bernie Sanders". After his decisive win in the first round of France's Socialist party primary, left-wing rebel, Benoit Hamon is suddenly the centre of attention.

But what do his rapid rise and eye-catching policies say about the future of the French left?
With his designer stubble and cheeky grin, the 49-year-old Socialist party rebel has been grabbing more than his share of the limelight over the past few weeks.

The most left-leaning of the seven initial candidates in the Socialist race, his programme has been built around the radical proposal of a universal monthly payment for all French citizens, regardless of income. He also wants to legalise cannabis, to tax the wealth created by robots and to ditch the labour law passed last year that made it easier to hire and fire.

The income plan he has outlined would be put into effect in three stages.

• First, the current minimum welfare payment for France's poorest would be increased by 10% to €600 (£515; $640) a month
• The payments would then be extended to all those from 18-25 years old
• Finally the programme would be rolled out to all French citizens sometime after 2022, with the monthly payment increased to €750 a month

France and Germany want to impose a Europe-wide ban on cash transactions of more than €5,000 ($5,600).

"We are striving to put in place a uniform limit on cash transactions in Europe,"

Michel Sapin (the French finance minister) discussed the proposal with his German counterpart at their regular twice-yearly meeting between the finance ministers and central bankers of France and Germany.

France has a limit of €1,000 on cash transactions, which was lowered from €3,000 after the terrorist attacks on Charlie Hebdo
...
In March last year Sapin announced the cash cap and other measures including greater monitoring of cash payments, withdrawals and small bank accounts in order to "fight against the use of cash and anonymity in the French economy, which enables "terrorism that is low cost to carry out but has major impact."

France now has one of the strictest caps. In 2011 Italy banned cash payments over €1,000, and in 2012 Spain capped cash payments to €2,500 for residents
...
In addition to discussing the ban on cash, on Tuesday the two countries and their central bankers also discussed the latters' proposals for structural reform of the Eurozone, including the establishment of a European finance ministry.

There are no victims in nature. Only winners and losers.

Men understand this.

CoinCube thinks Some women are victims who need protection from the State and that religion can fix it because men are weak and must fear God so they don't abuse women...

Very insteresting theory

But were the Jews really so important mighty Rome would have to create a religion in order to pacify them?

If so, why would there be so many banishments and murders of Christians up to 313 AC

CoinCube, your idealistic, effeminate, socialist nonsense is not worthy of a response...

When you argue that defection limits cooperation you appear to be confusing two distinct entities. Defection and rebellion are not synonyms. Cooperation involves a mutually beneficial exchange that improves the well-being of both participants. Defection is an interaction that benefits one party at the expense of another. Defection always implies violence, the threat of violence, ignorance, or forced interaction.

Top-down control fulfills its mandate when it maximizes cooperation and minimizes defection. Top-down control also uses fear, violence, and forced interaction. Top-down control is thus only morally justified if the use of those things results in an overall increase in cooperation and a reduction in defection.

The amount of top-down control required to maximize cooperation is inversely proportional to knowledge. As knowledge advances the of top-down control needed to maximize cooperation shrinks. However, humans are morally flawed resulting in recurrent excessive concentrations of power and a general refusal to cede power. The human condition is thus marked the gradual progression of technological and moral progress with either no accompanying change in top-down control or a counterintuitive increase in top-down control. When this happens the top-down control itself limits cooperation and becomes a form of defection. The situation is like a pressure cooker that eventually explodes in a rebellion resetting the top-down control to a more appropriate level.  

Defection and rebellion are thus entirely separate phenomenon. The first is evil and always morally unjustifiable. The second is not only just but a moral obligation once a superior solution to top-down failure becomes available.

A visual example may help:
This is rebellion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6ldlEbbphs
This is defection: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7t7gG3XVqW0

You often repeat the "we just need decentralization paradigms" argument. That is only half true. Yes we need decentralization paradigms. This is the growth of knowledge above. However, decentralization paradigms are only half of what we need. The other half of what we need is a top-down control that maximizes cooperation alongside new decentralization paradigms. Your anarchist tendencies recurrently lead to you gloss over this second part. You acknowledge that top-down control cannot be avoided then seem to stop thinking about it.

The reality is we need top-down control just as much as we need decentralization paradigms. That may be a bitter pill to swallow for an anarchist. The need for top-down control does not go away just because we don't like it or don't want to think about it.

I notice you tend to brush off this issue with comments such as "I don't want to fix the world" and "Trying to fix society is evil." these come across as avoidance. Adopting a lets just do decentralized anarchy and let the cards fall where they may approach is not a rational position.

Religion indeed is top-down control, but that statement is meaningless without context. We both need top-down control and will always need top-down control. Thus ultimately the relevant question is what kind of top-down control is religion.

That answer of course varies depending on what kind of religion we are talking about. The primitive idols worshiping pagans had horrific gods. These religions were tools of extreme top-down oppression and their extinction is welcome. See my post on Pagans and Human Sacrifice if you are interested in more on this.

However, belief in God especially individual belief in God coupled with a fear of God is something else entirely. A society where all individuals genuinely believed in and feared God would have very little defection. What defection did occur would be the result of ignorance not malice and even that would decline with time as knowledge progressed. An individual restrained only by a genuine belief and fear of God has complete operational autonomy he would willing choose only cooperation and never defection limited only by his knowledge of what actions constituted genuine cooperation.

Belief in God is top-down control. It is the purest manifestation of such control enabling a maximisation of freedom. Rejecting God leads ultimately to higher levels of defection and consequentially less freedom.