"Clean coal" more republican lies

The trouble with ThisIsWhyYoureWrong's argument for capitalism is that in your pure version of it, the economic externalities of pollution are not included in the cost of things. So, in a given industry, the polluters can make more profit than the non-polluters, assuming that it's cheaper to produce things by polluting, which is usually the case. The Libertarian argument that the victims of pollution can sue doesn't work because of the Halliburton argument above.

Also, how do you explain that some of the happiest countries in the world are socialist?

 

Imagine the coal industry carrying signs at the DNC convention that say, "Let us pollute! Let us pollute! Let us pollute!"

It's for sure that America has become more angry, more hateful, and more greedy since the republican fascists have started gaining power since Ronnie Raygun.

 

I would explain it by denying your premise. "happiness" isn't really quantifiable, but which socialist countries are happiest and because of which policies? Give examples to support your claim. The socialist countries I know of are mostly on the verge of collapse, and in direct relation to the degree they've allowed socialist policies to reign. Take Greece for example. The 3 predominant political parties of that country are socialist parties (New Democracy, Coalition of the Radical Left, and Panhellenic Socialist Movement). The choice there isn't liberal or conservative, it's more like socialist, or more socialist. Last time I checked, citizens there weren't very happy..

 

I am curious. Which countries are you referring to?

 

As a former sand rat, I can tell you that the sand does not rise very high, about 10 feet or so. Wind turbines are way above that. Ranchers have used windmills for decades to pump water and oil or generate electricity.

Not enough wind in Georgia except the coastal areas. Solar rules here!
Biofuels are possible too. Sorghum, ribbon cane, corn stalks, etc.

And yeah, ocean turbines make perfect sense. Tidal energy is powerful on GA coast.

 

No doubt about that.

Yes, of course we should conveniently forget the billions of dollars of publicly (that's the opposite of private, by the way) funded research, development, technology and infrastructure that these private sector visionairies avail themselves of and of course profit from. Maybe we should shift the entire defense budget burden to the private sector - since historically, they seem to be the ones who garnish the largest benefit from U.S. imperialism - Ah, but of course all that glorious profit trickles down doesn't it? If not in real dollars, certainly the pride we all feel in living in a nation with the largest number of millionaires and yet ranking 42nd in life expectancy. Ah, but we must keep our priorities in line, mustn't we?

Indeed, and this is what I mean by "selective capitalism". But remember, we're the government, right? We enjoy a representative republic. Under these circumstances, Government should be answering and serving the people it is governing. But that's not what's happening, and you apparently recognize this. De-regulation, small government, is what allowed the private sector to usurp this government with private money. It's inevitable that laissez faire capitalism would seek to undermine a democracy, because democracy ultimately gets in the way of the infinite growth paradigm, and make no mistake, this paradigm, as impossible and ludicrous as it is, IS the religion of laissez faire capitalism.

You say that capitalism is voluntary? That's great news, I think I'll go put a sign in front of my house that says 1% loans, any amount, NO CREDIT CHECKS. Then I'll set about printing my own currency and hand out loans in that currency (fractional reserve loans of course), base it on the Euro and when the Secret Service comes to arrest me, I'll tell them, "hey, get out of my bank, I'm doing capitalism here".

Tell you what: go take your next paycheck to a bank, where you don't have an account (a purely voluntary account, of course) and tell them to cash it. If they ask you if you have an account with them, don't worry about it, just tell them capitalism is voluntary.

Tell you what: next time you go to rent a car, or book a hotel, and they ask you for a credit card. Tell them you don't need one, because "capitalism is voluntary" then offer to pay them in pennies, or better yet, bags of wheat.

Yes, technically you don't have to participate in capitalism if you don't want to, but how many times have you seen "must have reliable transportation" as a requirement in a Want Ad? That seems like a bit of a hurdle to the American dream for someone born without a pot to piss in.

I wonder how eager your bank would be to let you open a savings account when the address on your paycheck says "Homeless". Technically, it's not illegal to be homeless - good thing capitalism provides all these fucking Wal-Mart parking lots to sleep in, or we might have people sleeping in shanty towns down by the river - oops, wait a minute.

.

The government has never passed a law that mandated outsourcing. The private sector loves to blame the government (us - remember? Representative Republic) for forcing them to fire people. I challenge you to show me one example of a U.S. factory that moved it's factory to Mexico, or Southeast Asia, because the government forced them into profitless"ness" - it's always a matter of not enough profit to follow the infinite growth paradigm fantasy. Labour Laws do cost companies money, so do environmental laws, and certainly human rights detracts from profits. Should we do away with them? How far should we regress to sustain the infinite growth paradigm? Repeal child labor laws? - cause that's really what this whole unemployment crisis is about. It's not taxes, it's not regulation or labor laws, it's greed, a lust for a bigger number than the previous years gifuckingnormous number, a red line, going up and up on a chart without any regard for countless other lines, on other charts going down, down, down. Whose going to buy these appliances and textiles, these IPADS and IPODS when 90% of the U.S. population is living below the poverty level? Is it going to be the factory worker, living in a company dorm, in southeast Asia? Where are these "profits" going to come from, when the people making this crap can't even afford to buy it? Sound familiar? Yes, we've seen this kind of thing before in this country. You can shuffle capitalism off to an exotic local, and the problems go away for a little while, but they'll rear their ugly little heads sooner than later.

Yes, you're right, it's naive to think that the government can be reformed. I guess the answer is to do away with government entirely and when someone fails to give the correct change at the supermarket, you just raise your AK-47 and shoot them straight in the face. I think I like this version of laissez-faire capitalism. I can't imagine a better way to encourage healthy competition, unsurpassed service, and fanatical employee loyalty and performance than to eliminate government altogether and follow the might makes right formula with regard to regulating the free markets. Ah, but you say I've gone too far . . . not if you follow the rationale of unrestrained capitalism to it's ridiculous conclusion. By the way, we've seen this before, only they called it feudalism. The only difference is, in this model, nobility isn't the birthright, it's Granpa Warbucks' land assets and portfolio.

.


Agreed, I think I covered that pretty well up above, except to say that I meant "selective laissez faire" capitalism to be an oxymoron, because that's exactly what capitalism is in this country. And you're right about not having anything remotely close to "laissez faire capitalism" in this country - but I would go one further and say, we've never had it, and no one else has either. It's like Communism - it's never been practiced as Marx imagined it, not in the history of the world, and it never will. Neither has socialism, despite what your history teacher told you.

The root cause, to answer your question, is Greed and this doomed notion of ownership, of course, but that's getting dangerously philosophical and we're not going to get any where with that, are we? My suggestion? Eliminate the concept and practice of private ownership of natural resources, knowledge/education, and healthcare. These things are too important to be left to the whims of profiteering. No lobbies or special interests in these areas in particular. Make it a treasonous act to influence the governance of these three areas for any reason. Let's democratize these completely, let the people decide directly how these three transcendant elements of direct importance to the sustainability of human life on this planet are handled. If we go the representative-elected-official route, then we insist on the highest level of scrutiny. Mandates that isolate the elected official from any influence beyond his/her constituency, no jobs, no thinktank/washington insider/lobby parachute job after the fact, no paychecks, no income of any kind beyond official compensation and subsequent pension - if that's not enough, then go work directly for Haliburton, don't do it under the guise of a civil servant. This could be done and enforced. No one could convince me otherwise. And it I think would serve as an excellent filter to discourage greedy profiteers from seeking public office in the first place. The Creme rarely rises to the top when it comes to positions of power in government, but we could change that, and all it requires is a collective change of perception - admittedly no small task.

Chief Justices make a little more than $200,000 a year. And that often referenced McDonalds case and its ilk, are a helluva lot more rare than the people who rely on them for rhetoric with regard to flippant lawsuits care to really look into. Would you be willing to quit your job to pursue a law suit all the way to the supreme court? That's not an uncommon experience. And what if some corporate goon made a credible threat to the safety of your family? Don't think this sort of thing happens? http://colombiajournal.org/colombia73.htm

And my word - you really think that an industry of "private arbitration" is the answer? Do you really think such an industry could self regulate? Oh, I'm sure they'd love to try to mete out justice to the highest bidder and dispense with all the formalities. Oh, yeah, very efficient. This is a lawyer's absolute wet dream your talking about. And you think I'm insane? Efficient? For who? What you're describing is plutocracy. Capitalism AS GOVERNMENT. I agree we're already well upon our way to this nightmarish vision, but frankly I'd think I'd rather at least keep up the appearance of a representative republic. I pray you never have to navigate this horrific road you've imagined. How eager do you think your media would be to tell your story when Haliburton threatens to yank millions of dollars of advertising from your corporate sponsored media outlet of choice? Free Press? LOL. Another unicorn.

Markets and Price have nothing - NOTHING - to do with sustainability. They are an artifice and you cannot hedge your way around physics with creative accounting. Alternatives are finite on this planet. Technology is not sorcery, there are limits, and if you think we have the time, resources and capability to invent ourselves out of peak oil, then you don't have any understanding of how dependent we are on oil. All of these alternatives you suggest - All of them require oil. So does the production of potable water, as we now know it - unless of course you've already begun to collect rain water directly, yourself, in your yard, to drink. All of our infrastructure, pipelines, highways, powergrid, solar panels - throw a handful of rice into the air in your kitchen and ninety percent of it will fall on something that required oil, either directly or indirectly, to make.

And finally, I hope my rants do worry you. In fact, I hope they worry the shit out of you, because there is much to be worried about, and kicking the can down the road a little further and blindly worshipping at the idol of capitalism isn't going to solve the problem. Pretending that the problem doesn't exist is truly psychopathic.

Happy Labor Day.

 

you too ^^

Well, I'll just point out that everyone who previously made such predictions, and held such beliefs throughout history have been proven wrong. Like I said, people were terrified of over-hunting whales for blubber to fuel their lanterns. Every lantern on the planet was dependent on whale blubber at one point! Yet the technology was replaced. There was a scare early in the century that the entire working population was going to be "automated" and replaced by the year 2000. People have made countless calculations forecasting wide-spread starvation if our population continued to grow at it's current rate. All have been wrong. Even the person credited with the "peak-oil" theory in the 50's, Marion King Hubbert, has been widely debunked. He grossly underestimated our supplies of oil, and predicted a rapid decline in the 1970s.

If we can't count on technology and human innovation, what can we count on? Are we just doomed? Should we just not bother reproducing? We certainly couldn't support our current population without some sort of industry. If you want to see what happens when there's a population explosion without the technology to support it, look at Calcutta. Is that our inevitable conclusion in your world view? I understand your fears, however I choose to have a more optimistic outlook, and a greater trust in the ingenuity of the human race (As long as we permit it to function). Based on the last 200 years, I see no reason to suspect that technology won't continue to outstrip consumption and growth.

Unless of course, we do this^. Look at examples where this has been tried, the Soviet Union for example. Over 20 million people died during that illustrious experiment. Complete removal of private ownership of resources and knowledge, wooohooo! Look at our own public education system, and the complete failure of that "publicly" owned system. Look at countries with socialized medicine and the results of removing private ownership from them.
I guess one good thing about is that you get to die quicker, which will at least partially offset all the tax increases.

 

Nice chart. Survival rate of what? Link please . . . My insufferable paranoia (critical thinking skills) prevents me from accepting a chart, even one this pretty, as fact.

 

Cancer

 

Interesting approach to "truth" - this blog, and I quote, "What's really cool is that the tools we build can answer a lot more than just our own questions. You can change the input factors to better agree with how you see things . . ." http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2007/11/first-time-visitor-to-political.html#.UEYjzyLkZ8E

Seems like "Political Calculations" is taking a page from Rupert Murdoch's school of "journalism".

But to be fair, the chart was "adapted" by information gleaned from the BBC. What this chart doesn't take into account is what "survival" really means when we're talking about cancer - If you're alive 5-years after diagnosis, you're considered a survivor. What this chart also doesn't take into acount are global cancer rates. It's great that health care in the U.S. as it currently is, is really good at giving an additional five-year life expectancy for people diagnosed with cancer.

"The dangers of international comparison Another big difference between UK and US cancer statistics is that in the UK, every single cancer diagnosis and death is registered nationally. In the US there is not nearly such complete data. So even comparing data that’s been properly standardised doesn’t give the whole picture – as we mentioned when discussing the EUROCARE european data a while back.
But it’s only valid to compare international statistics, of any sort, if you compare like with like – and this is extremely difficult to do between different populations, especially when the nature of the data is fundamentally different." http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk...careful-when-comparing-us-and-uk-cancer-care/


But how would de-regulation help to decrease cancer rates in the first place? I think one could make a very convincing argument that it does the exact opposite.

 

Yes sunfighter, where are these really happy flourishing countries of socialists??

 

Public schools in this country fail because they are run top down on a corporate business model. They also fail because parents fail to raise their own children in pursuit of money and this "American Dream" and in so doing, rely on the public schools to raise them instead.

 

I think public schools in this country suck because we let the federal government step in. Now they're all saying how public schools in this country suck, so more people jump on the bandwagon, to give them more leverage, to fuck the schools up more.

 

That's a very good point. Mises talked about how government intervention tends to be cumulative. Meaning that when the government intervenes to solve a problem, what typically happens is not only does it fail to solve the original problem, but it causes several more, which than justifies further government intervention (and onward towards socialism). Based on the unique way you phrased the concept, I can only assume you came to that conclusion on your own, which is pretty impressive.

There's so many examples of this today it's not even funny, but healthcare is one of the best. Make no mistake, all of the justifications given to move to a government run system (including rising prices, doctor shortages, our 3rd party payer system, etc), can be traced back, not to "capitalism", but to massive government intervention that perverted the market.

 

You think clean coal is a lie.. What about these electronic "eco-friendly" cars we're producing... "They run on batteries.. Not gas" "No emissions".. Where do you think that energy is coming from? The current electric car uses around 3 GALLONS OF WATER PER MILE! Not to mention the ass load of precious metals that go into making the batteries for these cars

 

I agree, one form of pollution always displaces another. That's a key reason why the push to move to alternatives before they are most beneficial to consumers is absurd.

To use your example of cars. If we didn't have all these awful cars, with their awful emissions polluting our atmosphere, we'd just have horses causing mass pollution in our streets with feces and urine. (which would arguably be much worse for our health). I'm sure when we're all driving around using batteries (if that is indeed the next alternative that emerges), environmentalists will be screaming about them too, and warning us all of the eminent depletion of lithium and whatever else. It's almost like that they would prefer we just scrap technology all together, allow the majority of the human race to die off, and return to some sort of agrarian society where we focus all of our energy on basic survival. Our lives would certainly suck, but at least the environment would be completely intact!

 

I need all the horse manure I can get right now. It would age nicely in my garden and be ready for my veggies by springtime.
But you don't need to ride a horse, you can walk, bike, take the bus.
Rare earths are toxic and so is their production. Research on battery technology needs to find alternatives to these toxic metals for a variety of reasons.

 

Capitalists LOVE BIG GOVERNMENT, when it serves their purpose, when it subsidizes them, when it bails them out, when it protects them from the carnage and violence they create and profit from. Only when it impedes them from exploiting people and natural resources beyond any reasonable sense of responsibility, do they cry foul. Capitalism would not, could not, exist without GOVERNMENT and oversight.

 

Absofukinlutly!

 

Yup! Look up Sulfide Mining.. It's the big concern right now in northern Minnesota.. with an estimated over $1 trillion in silver, gold, platinum, palladium, nickle, and copper reserves