If the United States loses the economic weapons of control, it is very much weakened.

Worker ownership within a state capitalist, semi-market system is better than private ownership but it has inherent problems. Markets have well-known inherent inefficiencies. They're very destructive.

Right now, huge numbers of people cannot obtain even drinking water, and the situation is likely to become worse with predicted climate change and failure to take the actions that are necessary.

Science is a bit like the joke about the drunk who is looking under a lamppost for a key that he has lost on the other side of the street, because that's where the light is. It has no other choice.

The local grocery store was a gathering, a community place. You knew the owner, if you didn't have any money they'd let you go for a couple days. You talked. It was a friendly place. Supermarkets are totally impersonal. I mean, you may say hello to the checkout girl or something, but the personal connections are all gone.

My memory - faded, as I say - is that Paul Johnson was trying to vilify all intellectuals who were at all critical of the states he worships, and of power generally (except, of course, the power of enemies, which we must denounce, imitating the commissars who are his models, though he doesn't understand it).

The current period of regression is registering some success in "producing people" who are subordinated to external power, diverted to such "superficial things" as "fashionable consumption" and other pursuits more fitting for the "bewildered herd" than participation in determining the course of individual and social life.