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#91
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OT but a welcome bit of brightness
songbird wrote:
Do you acknowledge that capitalism produces unacceptible outcomes if growth is not maintained? no. i think deflation or steady state on prices is as preferable to some people as inflation is to others. i think the policy of pushing the system to have some inflation is actually destructive in the long term, but the governments/social tinkerers at present like to hide all sorts of inefficiencies by using this. also it is a transfer of wealth indirectly (not very efficiently either) from savers to debtors (usually this means from the elderly to the young). Show me where there has been zero growth or contraction under capitalism for any length of time. Now tell me what the unemployment was like then. That is the boogy man the financial controllers and leaders are all scared of. the crap results are crap because the system is crap front loaded from the start. garbage in, garbage out. There is much more to it than weak businesses going under in bad times. But let's stick to the point. that capitalism requires profit? well how many times can i disagree with that as it's pretty clear to me that the system doesn't magically stop when companies go non-profit or have a bad year. even in the worst parts of the Great Depression there were still companies in business, there were still people buying and selling things. it really wasn't a problem of capitalism, but many failed policies and the lack of banking regulations. then about 80 years later we ignored the lesson and made banking regulations too lax and once again the economy took a severe hit, but in that mess there were a lot of opportunities for the smart person willing to take risks. Sounds to me that you are not a true blue free market capitalist at all. You want it reined in. If it is a naturally correcting system then why is this necessary? Because the ways that capitalism does its corrections if left unattended are not acceptable to you. You also point out that the controls that are used are not always effective. Wouldn't it be simpler just to admit that the system is broken? values will change as resources become more limited. that's the nature of the beast. prices rise as supply becomes limited. people either produce their own (food, water, etc.) or conserve or find other sources. what drives the whole system is the many individual choices made, how they add up. when we start bumping up against hard limits like fresh water and food supply then people will start valuing water conservation and not wasting so much food. this type of gradual shift is already happening and will continue to happen. There are three things wrong with this: 1) The assumption that market forces will eventually result in a satisfactory new equilibrium no, i only claim the system keeps working. it is a dynamic system that also has many conflicting forces just like there are many different actors with varying degrees of influence. i suspect the future is going to be full of many unsatisfied people. we're not a species geared towards contentment. it's not a skill that is taught, valued or explored by many. i think i've done fairly well on that count though, perhaps others can learn from what i'm doing... This is a blue-sky imagination product. Either you have to show that capitalism with zero growth will continue without ultrahigh unemployment or that a new system that doesn't produce unemployment with zero growth will evolve. You have done neither. i think you ignore the fact that for the most part actual production of real things is a very minor part of capitalism these days. i.e. the values have already shifted. most people could be considered unemployed or under-employed because most of what they do is shuffle information, provide entertainment to others, they really aren't producing tangible things. You are confused between the level of employment in a business sector and the resources it demands. Despite the swing from large employment in agriculture, then industry and now information and services all those workers who don't actually produce material goods still want them. The mechanisation of agriculture and industry have if anything added to the material resource requirements of the economy. 2) The assumption that the transition will be gradual and orderly i don't make that claim either. i've been a student of the markets and history to know better. the only argument i'm making is that the system continues to function without growth. we've had many periods of deflation or stagnation and in those cases the markets worked, people bought and sold things and the world did not end. yes, it hurt some people and was painful, but that doesn't show that the system didn't function. what it did show is that people don't normally have any long-term thinking for retirement or very much discipline when it comes to savings and investing. What you define as 'continue to function' would result in such social costs that no politician who wants to stay in office would say the situation was satisfactory. I would be the same as I wouldn't want to be lynched by an unemployed mob either. 3) The assumption that it will happen soon enough to allow orderly transition away from dependence on diminishing resources. We see as plain as day with the climate change issue people will stick to the old ways until the bitter end. They will not prepare in time for a new future. They will waste time, deny, continue to exploit limited resources until the last. The concept of finite resources that limit growth and require a whole new way of thinking is not one that people want to believe - therefore they don't - therefore they will not prepare for it. no, there is no assumption of orderly because you are talking about people here. people panic and freak out over all sorts of things. all i assume is that the system continues to function. But it will function so badly that you have bent the meaning of 'function' so far out of shape to be useless. I begin to think that in many ways you actually agree with me but you are too emotionally wedded to the American Dream (the one based on a high expansion, high consumption capitalist system) that you can't give up on staying with capitalism and claiming that it will 'work' no matter what. David |
#92
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OT but a welcome bit of brightness
Billy wrote:
songbird wrote: Billy wrote: .... McArthur , and I will be back shortly. "You're fired!" Donald Trump. is that quote enough? ok, just kidding, you are not fired. have a good night. we're up two more inches of rain. we aren't going to get any planting done today. so instead we're heading out in a few minutes to run errands/shop. Rain yesterday, kept me out of the garden. The peas seem to be enjoying the 70F weather, as do the tomatoes (surprise, surprise). The peppers not so much. I've lost some plants to varmints, snail or cats, I don't know which. I had a back up plant for the tomato, but I'm down 4/26 on my peppers, and 3/16 on my corn. you're in a dry enough area that sprinkling corn starch around might give you a few clues as to the varmint. I'll probably have to buy starters for the peppers, as it seems too late to germinate fresh replacements. The corn was replaced by sunflowers. When the corn goes to tassel, I'll just have to get involved to make sure that the cobs will be full. Every thing is pretty much in except for the squash, and melons. That should be finished by today. To my taste making pesto from fresh store bought basil is a futile endevor. It just doesn't have enough flavor. Bought a couple of live basil plants from Trader Joe's a month or so ago. We had our second pesto from them last night. There were only 5 flowering tops in it, and it still lacks taste. I suppose it could be me. I've read that as you get older, your taste buds become less sensitive, and you need stronger flavors to get their attention. In any event, I'll be happier when the pesto is mostly flowering tops. the bees will like it better too! yes, rumor has it tastebuds and smell fade along with sight, but i think a lot of it also involves how much you abuse it earlier. my sense of smell and taste are pretty good. i get a lot of off-tastes in almost any commercially packaged food if it is in anything other than glass. metallic off-tastes in almost anything canned in tin cans, even those with liner plastic coatings, then i taste those too at times. plastic wraps and left-over food containers (styrofoam is a big yick). I'll be starting a new germination tray today with green beans, as well as mid-season replacement squash, and more lettuce. Can't ever have enough lettuce. So I;m down to trying to squeeze in whatever is left over. that's what i'm like with peas and beans. any empty spot is fair game. Whew. read about California Supercapacitor, 18yr old student comes up with a potential game changer for every rechargable device. unfortunately, i don't have time to dig into the descriptions to see what it entails, but hey, i like when some unexpected discovery comes along and makes everyone go, "Hmmm...." songbird |
#93
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OT but a welcome bit of brightness
In article ,
songbird wrote: read about California Supercapacitor, 18yr old student comes up with a potential game changer for every rechargable device. unfortunately, i don't have time to dig into the descriptions to see what it entails, but hey, i like when some unexpected discovery comes along and makes everyone go, "Hmmm...." songbird Yup. Twenty second recharge on cell phones, near-instantaneously recharging a car battery, and rapid recycling of military lasers. Wait, what the . . ? Can Skynet be far behind? Hmmmmmmmmmm -- Remember Rachel Corrie http://www.rachelcorrie.org/ Welcome to the New America. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA736oK9FPg |
#94
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OT but a welcome bit of brightness
David Hare-Scott wrote:
songbird wrote: Do you acknowledge that capitalism produces unacceptible outcomes if growth is not maintained? no. i think deflation or steady state on prices is as preferable to some people as inflation is to others. i think the policy of pushing the system to have some inflation is actually destructive in the long term, but the governments/social tinkerers at present like to hide all sorts of inefficiencies by using this. also it is a transfer of wealth indirectly (not very efficiently either) from savers to debtors (usually this means from the elderly to the young). Show me where there has been zero growth or contraction under capitalism for any length of time. Now tell me what the unemployment was like then. That is the boogy man the financial controllers and leaders are all scared of. i'm not able to do that research at the moment, i'll put it on my list for this winter (along with Capitalism/Marxism and other related topics). i have a general recollection of periods of time in the late 1880s where the uSoA had a poor economy and some recessions and deflation, but i wouldn't be surprised if you couldn't find reasons to object to those examples (not suitably industrial enough, or poor labor statistics or no statistics at all). i think periods of the Great Depression were deflationary and the unemployment numbers didn't change that much (the damage had already been done), towards the end, i just have no stats on hand here and i'm not interested in that kind of research ATM. i'm more interested in sustainable agriculture/gardening topics and the related sciences... the crap results are crap because the system is crap front loaded from the start. garbage in, garbage out. There is much more to it than weak businesses going under in bad times. But let's stick to the point. that capitalism requires profit? well how many times can i disagree with that as it's pretty clear to me that the system doesn't magically stop when companies go non-profit or have a bad year. even in the worst parts of the Great Depression there were still companies in business, there were still people buying and selling things. it really wasn't a problem of capitalism, but many failed policies and the lack of banking regulations. then about 80 years later we ignored the lesson and made banking regulations too lax and once again the economy took a severe hit, but in that mess there were a lot of opportunities for the smart person willing to take risks. Sounds to me that you are not a true blue free market capitalist at all. no as i find slavery deplorable, a true blue free market capitalist says all is market and all vices/sins are possible/exploitable and taxable. sometimes i find that leaning appealing as then the government can be turned into a more taxed approach to where all is permitted but it is taxed more highly as the evidence of damage accumulates. so the actual cost to those not involved in the practice is isolated or even the wider population has a better or improved life because the few who insist on the more damaging approaches to life pay a disproportionate tax. so they are used to advance society as they destroy themselves. unfortunately, taxes rarely go for programs they are intended to (c.f. the lotto or tobacco settlement monies). You want it reined in. If it is a naturally correcting system then why is this necessary? i want it changed to reflect the costs of pollution and the depletion or destruction of resources. that is just encouraging the system to reflect the true costs so that it can work better at eliminating them. it does not "correct itself" by direct fiddling, it changes by getting a large enough group of individuals (who make up the market) to change their actions. the government plays catchup most of the time. rarely are they out front in terms of policies. climate change being a large example in point. given a free market i can invest in companies which do what i want (for the most part) and if i can convince enough others to shift their decisions in a similar manner then i can drive up the financing costs for companies which don't do things as i'd like. the more accurately i can make a polluting company reflect the damage the more likely it will change ways. make the cost high enough and it can't continue and we get a market response to a societal value completely apart from any governmental lack of decisions on pollution (this is pretty much what is happening now, but it is a slow process). the companies already ahead of the shift are those that reap the rewards as the value of what they are doing is recognised. Because the ways that capitalism does its corrections if left unattended are not acceptable to you. it's not capitalism which does the corrections it is the sum result of the decisions of the market participants. so the market reflects the values of the people in various (and conflicting ways). if i were a dictator i could eliminate a lot of noise and wasted energy, but like you say i'd be lynched so what's the point of such a game other than kicking around ideas trying to find a better way. my own ideas of a better way leaves capital markets in place, but forces all costs of pollution or lack of recycling and destruction or depletion of resources to be built into the taxes and prices of products (also allows for wild spaces and taxes to refurbish damaged areas, demolition of unused buildings and replanting with trees or other suitable species). if you manufacture an item, it comes with a built in recycling fee and a pollution fee (which gets adjusted as more information becomes known, as pollution improves, etc). also all products sold are returnable to the manufacturer (as long as they are in business (for no additional fee), once they go under then the recycling is covered by a more general tax). this way electric cars could be put into use more quickly and the recharging done with wind/solar energy as much as possible. getting off the fossil fuel burning route is critical right now. adding a carbon tax above the damage rate (so that CO2 remediation and removal projects can be funded and gotten going). so yes, not at all a free market person as i would also rewrite chunks of the US constitution and make other changes to many laws i find wasteful along with many subsidies which damage the environment or topsoil (and increased enforcement of violations and remediations). You also point out that the controls that are used are not always effective. Wouldn't it be simpler just to admit that the system is broken? i don't claim it functions perfectly. so yes, that means it is broken in various ways. some ways i find pretty horrible (that a few people could cause wars that cost trillions of dollars and kill thousands). i'd put the bill for those at the feet of those who carried it out not the wider population or future generations. i'd also redo much of government as wasted or damaging (river management is clearly destroying environment and groundwater along with topsoil depletion, we should be encouraging farmers to not put in yet more drainage (as that turns the ground water into the streams/rivers even faster leading to ground water pollution being even more concentrated or worse in terms of pollution from runoff). there are a huge number of changes that could be done right now that pay off over the long term. most of them shift labor from meaningless paper shuffling to actually doing something which helps restore species habitat and preserves topsoil. even simple stuff like cleaning up vacant lots, tearing down abandoned houses and getting the areas replanted with a variety of suitable species turns the land into a better climate for good things and reduces the negative impression and crimes around abandoned buildings. get that done sooner and we have an actual carbon sink being created as the trees get larger. it doesn't take long for a tree to be a net carbon sink. later harvest those trees and turn them into furniture or buildings for the poor and then the carbon gets locked up even longer (as compared to if it were used as fuel for heating or cooking or...). values will change as resources become more limited. that's the nature of the beast. prices rise as supply becomes limited. people either produce their own (food, water, etc.) or conserve or find other sources. what drives the whole system is the many individual choices made, how they add up. when we start bumping up against hard limits like fresh water and food supply then people will start valuing water conservation and not wasting so much food. this type of gradual shift is already happening and will continue to happen. There are three things wrong with this: 1) The assumption that market forces will eventually result in a satisfactory new equilibrium no, i only claim the system keeps working. it is a dynamic system that also has many conflicting forces just like there are many different actors with varying degrees of influence. i suspect the future is going to be full of many unsatisfied people. we're not a species geared towards contentment. it's not a skill that is taught, valued or explored by many. i think i've done fairly well on that count though, perhaps others can learn from what i'm doing... This is a blue-sky imagination product. Either you have to show that capitalism with zero growth will continue without ultrahigh unemployment or that a new system that doesn't produce unemployment with zero growth will evolve. You have done neither. i think you ignore the fact that for the most part actual production of real things is a very minor part of capitalism these days. i.e. the values have already shifted. most people could be considered unemployed or under-employed because most of what they do is shuffle information, provide entertainment to others, they really aren't producing tangible things. You are confused between the level of employment in a business sector and the resources it demands. Despite the swing from large employment in agriculture, then industry and now information and services all those workers who don't actually produce material goods still want them. and if the market reflected the true costs of having them i couldn't even object. it just means the future society has a much better chance of living a similar good life if we switch from destructive non-recycled production methods to more sustainable ones. The mechanisation of agriculture and industry have if anything added to the material resource requirements of the economy. well sure as fossil fuels are behind a large portion of it. if the costs of all of that CO2 (and the damage it is causing already with much of the future damages also built in) were included in the taxes for such products then those material costs would reflect reality (unlike as you say it has decoupled currently). the thing is that reality will get it's due. 2) The assumption that the transition will be gradual and orderly i don't make that claim either. i've been a student of the markets and history to know better. the only argument i'm making is that the system continues to function without growth. we've had many periods of deflation or stagnation and in those cases the markets worked, people bought and sold things and the world did not end. yes, it hurt some people and was painful, but that doesn't show that the system didn't function. what it did show is that people don't normally have any long-term thinking for retirement or very much discipline when it comes to savings and investing. What you define as 'continue to function' would result in such social costs that no politician who wants to stay in office would say the situation was satisfactory. I would be the same as I wouldn't want to be lynched by an unemployed mob either. yet for some strange reason politicians continue to be elected and unlynched even now in most modern capitalistish societies. my changes would be to eliminate popular elections/campaigns along with pretty close monitoring of money going to representatives (regular audits of them and their contacts to detect any funny changes in income or savings or offshore accounts). but that's even further afield... 3) The assumption that it will happen soon enough to allow orderly transition away from dependence on diminishing resources. We see as plain as day with the climate change issue people will stick to the old ways until the bitter end. They will not prepare in time for a new future. They will waste time, deny, continue to exploit limited resources until the last. The concept of finite resources that limit growth and require a whole new way of thinking is not one that people want to believe - therefore they don't - therefore they will not prepare for it. no, there is no assumption of orderly because you are talking about people here. people panic and freak out over all sorts of things. all i assume is that the system continues to function. But it will function so badly that you have bent the meaning of 'function' so far out of shape to be useless. no, it's just history that shows me that. if something has happened dozens of times in various circumstances i'd be very silly to not pay attention to the information those events have provided. my widest claim is that the system continues to function and reflects the values of the society, if the society changes enough and enough actors make different financial decisions then the market itself reflects those changes. the market can drive some effects and gets feedback loops, but those can be worked out in time. i don't see any other system other than benevolent dictator which allows such changes to happen without revolutions. yet we've had close to four revolutions in a few hundred years and the system continues on in some form or another. sometimes with more regulation other times with less, but i think generally it works well enough. not purely how i'd like, but it's got more going for it than the government does in terms of being able to change rapidly once new information becomes widely known. I begin to think that in many ways you actually agree with me but you are too emotionally wedded to the American Dream (the one based on a high expansion, high consumption capitalist system) i don't think you know me that well, but i don't have the time to spell it all out yet again how i live my life. in terms of reform of the system i'd go for large changes in government (including rewriting portions of the constitution and several other laws). the market would shake and shimmy as people freaked out, but that is a short-term adjustment needed to prevent an even longer term catastrophe. that you can't give up on staying with capitalism and claiming that it will 'work' no matter what. i don't see a viable alternative that can respond as quickly to new information. we'd need a revolution of huge proportion to change to something else. more likely we'll continue to jigger this one with policy patches and social tinkerings and the whole system will gradually change to reflect the values of the majority that comes along next. i sure hope that majority is more environmentally aware... at present i don't think it is as much as it needs to be that is why i aim my efforts at talking to people around things like gardening because at least they do understand that they can get food from a gardener. songbird |
#95
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OT but a welcome bit of brightness
In article , songbird wrote: David Hare-Scott wrote: songbird wrote: Do you acknowledge that capitalism produces unacceptible outcomes if growth is not maintained? no. i think deflation or steady state on prices is as preferable to some people as inflation is to others. i think the policy of pushing the system to have some inflation is actually destructive in the long term, but the governments/social tinkerers at present like to hide all sorts of inefficiencies by using this. also it is a transfer of wealth indirectly (not very efficiently either) from savers to debtors (usually this means from the elderly to the young). Show me where there has been zero growth or contraction under capitalism for any length of time. Now tell me what the unemployment was like then. That is the boogy man the financial controllers and leaders are all scared of. i'm not able to do that research at the moment, i'll put it on my list for this winter (along with Capitalism/Marxism and other related topics). i have a general recollection of periods of time in the late 1880s where the uSoA had a poor economy and some recessions and deflation, but i wouldn't be surprised if you couldn't find reasons to object to those examples (not suitably industrial enough, or poor labor statistics or no statistics at all). i think periods of the Great Depression were deflationary and the unemployment numbers didn't change that much (the damage had already been done), towards the end, i just have no stats on hand here and i'm not interested in that kind of research ATM. i'm more interested in sustainable agriculture/gardening topics and the related sciences... the crap results are crap because the system is crap front loaded from the start. garbage in, garbage out. There is much more to it than weak businesses going under in bad times. But let's stick to the point. that capitalism requires profit? well how many times can i disagree with that as it's pretty clear to me that the system doesn't magically stop when companies go non-profit or have a bad year. even in the worst parts of the Great Depression there were still companies in business, there were still people buying and selling things. it really wasn't a problem of capitalism, but many failed policies and the lack of banking regulations. then about 80 years later we ignored the lesson and made banking regulations too lax and once again the economy took a severe hit, but in that mess there were a lot of opportunities for the smart person willing to take risks. Sounds to me that you are not a true blue free market capitalist at all. no as i find slavery deplorable, a true blue free market capitalist says all is market and all vices/sins are possible/exploitable and taxable. sometimes i find that leaning appealing Are you talking "white", or "black" slavery here? Somehow, I get the feeling that economics should take a backseat to morality. as then the government can be turned into a more taxed approach to where all is permitted but it is taxed more highly as the evidence of damage accumulates. so the actual cost to those not involved in the practice is isolated or even the wider population has a better or improved life because the few who insist on the more damaging approaches to life pay a disproportionate tax. so they are used to advance society as they destroy themselves. unfortunately, taxes rarely go for programs they are intended to (c.f. the lotto or tobacco settlement monies). War, fossil fuel subsidies, and other earmarks You want it reined in. If it is a naturally correcting system then why is this necessary? i want it changed to reflect the costs of pollution and the depletion or destruction of resources. that is just encouraging the system to reflect the true costs so that it can work better at eliminating them. Some in Congress would call that new taxes, and you'd be stopped in your tracks. it does not "correct itself" by direct fiddling, it changes by getting a large enough group of individuals (who make up the market) to change their actions. the government plays catchup most of the time. rarely are they out front in terms of policies. climate change being a large example in point. given a free market i can invest in companies which do what i want (for the most part) and if i can convince enough others to shift their decisions in a similar manner Investors can invest, or not invest. Those are the only real options that they have. then i can drive up the financing costs for companies which don't do things as i'd like. If you've noticed the Stock Market recently, you'll see that the large firms are doing quite well. The only businesses that need investing are the small businesses which have very little effect on the economy except in aggregate. the more accurately i can make a polluting company reflect the damage the more likely it will change ways. make the cost high enough and it can't continue and we get a market response to a societal value completely apart from any governmental lack of decisions on pollution (this is pretty much what is happening now, but it is a slow process). AYN RAND: I am opposed to all forms of control. I am for an absolute laissez-faire, free, unregulated economy. Let me put it briefly. I am for the separation of state and economics. Greenspan is Rand's acolyte, who prevented the derivatives market from being regulated (transparency), and led the way to it's crash. (See Frontline's: The Warning (About Brooksley Born) the companies already ahead of the shift are those that reap the rewards as the value of what they are doing is recognized. Because the ways that capitalism does its corrections if left unattended are not acceptable to you. it's not capitalism which does the corrections it is the sum result of the decisions of the market participants. so the market reflects the values of the people in various (and conflicting ways). As it turns out, the problem is the lack of transparency, without the sucker getting an even break. Then when it blows up, and the perpetrators lose money, the suckers make good the money that the perpetrators lost, so that they can be victimized all over again. Additionally, this concept of the self-regulating "Free Market" is for the simple minded. We had a "Free Market", and J.D. Rockefeller made it his own. An economy with out regulators is like a football game without referees. I would think everyone would understand that since 2008. if i were a dictator i could eliminate a lot of noise and wasted energy, but like you say i'd be lynched so what's the point of such a game other than kicking around ideas trying to find a better way. my own ideas of a better way leaves capital markets in place, but forces all costs of pollution or lack of recycling and destruction or depletion of resources to be built into the taxes and prices of products (also allows for wild spaces and taxes to refurbish damaged areas, demolition of unused buildings and replanting with trees or other suitable species). if you manufacture an item, it comes with a built in recycling fee and a pollution fee (which gets adjusted as more information becomes known, as pollution improves, etc). also all products sold are returnable to the manufacturer (as long as they are in business (for no additional fee), once they go under then the recycling is covered by a more general tax). this way electric cars could be put into use more quickly and the recharging done with wind/solar energy as much as possible. getting off the fossil fuel burning route is critical right now. adding a carbon tax above the damage rate (so that CO2 remediation and removal projects can be funded and gotten going). so yes, not at all a free market person as i would also rewrite chunks of the US constitution and make other changes to many laws i find wasteful along with many subsidies which damage the environment or topsoil (and increased enforcement of violations and remediations). You also point out that the controls that are used are not always effective. Wouldn't it be simpler just to admit that the system is broken? i don't claim it functions perfectly. (rolling of eyes) so yes, that means it is broken in various ways. some ways i find pretty horrible (that a few people could cause wars that cost trillions of dollars and kill thousands). i'd put the bill for those at the feet of those who carried it out not the wider population or future generations. We all paid for it with our taxes. i'd also redo much of government as wasted or damaging (river management is clearly destroying environment and groundwater along with topsoil depletion, we should be encouraging farmers to not put in yet more drainage (as that turns the ground water into the streams/rivers even faster leading to ground water pollution being even more concentrated or worse in terms of pollution from runoff). there are a huge number of changes that could be done right now that pay off over the long term. most of them shift labor from meaningless paper shuffling to actually doing something which helps restore species habitat and preserves topsoil. even simple stuff like cleaning up vacant lots, tearing down abandoned houses and getting the areas replanted with a variety of suitable species turns the land into a better climate for good things and reduces the negative impression and crimes around abandoned buildings. get that done sooner and we have an actual carbon sink being created as the trees get larger. it doesn't take long for a tree to be a net carbon sink. later harvest those trees and turn them into furniture or buildings for the poor and then the carbon gets locked up even longer (as compared to if it were used as fuel for heating or cooking or...). The problem is that our overlords don't seem to recognize the real, physical world. They only understand their virtual, economic world. values will change as resources become more limited. that's the nature of the beast. prices rise as supply becomes limited. people either produce their own (food, water, etc.) or conserve or find other sources. what drives the whole system is the many individual choices made, how they add up. when we start bumping up against hard limits like fresh water and food supply then people will start valuing water conservation and not wasting so much food. this type of gradual shift is already happening and will continue to happen. There are three things wrong with this: 1) The assumption that market forces will eventually result in a satisfactory new equilibrium no, i only claim the system keeps working. it is a dynamic system that also has many conflicting forces just like there are many different actors with varying degrees of influence. i suspect the future is going to be full of many unsatisfied people. we're not a species geared towards contentment. it's not a skill that is taught, valued or explored by many. i think i've done fairly well on that count though, perhaps others can learn from what i'm doing... You mean that there is nothing we can do about being sheared like sheep. This is a blue-sky imagination product. Either you have to show that capitalism with zero growth will continue without ultrahigh unemployment or that a new system that doesn't produce unemployment with zero growth will evolve. You have done neither. i think you ignore the fact that for the most part actual production of real things is a very minor part of capitalism these days. i.e. the values have already shifted. most people could be considered unemployed or under-employed because most of what they do is shuffle information, provide entertainment to others, they really aren't producing tangible things. You are confused between the level of employment in a business sector and the resources it demands. Despite the swing from large employment in agriculture, then industry and now information and services all those workers who don't actually produce material goods still want them. and if the market reflected the true costs of having them i couldn't even object. it just means the future society has a much better chance of living a similar good life if we switch from destructive non-recycled production methods to more sustainable ones. It does reflect the true cost. They get the profits, and we get the costs. The mechanisation of agriculture and industry have if anything added to the material resource requirements of the economy. well sure as fossil fuels are behind a large portion of it. if the costs of all of that CO2 (and the damage it is causing already with much of the future damages also built in) were included in the taxes for such products then those material costs would reflect reality (unlike as you say it has decoupled currently). the thing is that reality will get it's due. The DOD has made plans for "Climate Change. Why wouldn't corporations already have plans to make profits from this next disaster? The only ones who don't have a plan, are those who rely on politicians to protect them. 2) The assumption that the transition will be gradual and orderly i don't make that claim either. i've been a student of the markets and history to know better. the only argument i'm making is that the system continues to function without growth. we've had many periods of deflation or stagnation and in those cases the markets worked, people bought and sold things and the world did not end. yes, it hurt some people and was painful, but that doesn't show that the system didn't function. what it did show is that people don't normally have any long-term thinking for retirement or very much discipline when it comes to savings and investing. What you define as 'continue to function' would result in such social costs that no politician who wants to stay in office would say the situation was satisfactory. I would be the same as I wouldn't want to be lynched by an unemployed mob either. By a 54 to 40 percent margin, all respondents say the U.S. is at the ³start of a longer term decline, where the U.S. is no longer the leading country in the world,² rather than ³going through the kind of tough time the country faces from time to time². Poll: Congress Has 14 Percent Approval Rating More Americans continue to disapprove than approve of sequestration, now by 56-35 percent More Americans continue to disapprove than approve of sequestration, now by 56-35 percent Let's face it, we've lost control of our government. yet for some strange reason politicians continue to be elected and unlynched even now in most modern capitalistish societies. my changes would be to eliminate popular elections/campaigns along with pretty close monitoring of money going to representatives (regular audits of them and their contacts to detect any funny changes in income or savings or offshore accounts). but that's even further afield... Public campaign financing would be so much simpler, since we are talking "Pie in the Sky". 3) The assumption that it will happen soon enough to allow orderly transition away from dependence on diminishing resources. We see as plain as day with the climate change issue people will stick to the old ways until the bitter end. They will not prepare in time for a new future. They will waste time, deny, continue to exploit limited resources until the last. The concept of finite resources that limit growth and require a whole new way of thinking is not one that people want to believe - therefore they don't - therefore they will not prepare for it. no, there is no assumption of orderly because you are talking about people here. people panic and freak out over all sorts of things. all i assume is that the system continues to function. But it will function so badly that you have bent the meaning of 'function' so far out of shape to be useless. no, it's just history that shows me that. if something has happened dozens of times in various circumstances i'd be very silly to not pay attention to the information those events have provided. Every once in a while, however, politicians do something so wrong, substantively and morally, that cynicism just won¹t cut it; it¹s time to get really angry instead. First, as millions of workers lost their jobs through no fault of their own, many families turned to food stamps to help them get by ‹ and while food aid is no substitute for a good job, it did significantly mitigate their misery. Food stamps were especially helpful to children who would otherwise be living in extreme poverty, defined as an income less than half the official poverty line. Wait, we¹re not done yet. Food stamps greatly reduce food insecurity among low-income children, which, in turn, greatly enhances their chances of doing well in school and growing up to be successful, productive adults. So food stamps are in a very real sense an investment in the nation¹s future ‹ an investment that in the long run almost surely reduces the budget deficit, because tomorrow¹s adults will also be tomorrow¹s taxpayers. So what do Republicans want to do with this paragon of programs? First, shrink it; then, effectively kill it. And why must food stamps be cut? We can¹t afford it, say politicians like Representative Stephen Fincher, a Republican of Tennessee, who backed his position with biblical quotations ‹ and who also, it turns out, has personally received millions in farm subsidies over the years. Look, I understand the supposed rationale: We¹re becoming a nation of takers, and doing stuff like feeding poor children and giving them adequate health care are just creating a culture of dependency ‹ and that culture of dependency, not runaway bankers, somehow caused our economic crisis. But I wonder whether even Republicans really believe that story ‹ or at least are confident enough in their diagnosis to justify policies that more or less literally take food from the mouths of hungry children. The absurdity of the cuts angers the people they affect. The US can undoubtedly see how Southern Europe is driving itself into the ground with its belt-tightening measures and how unemployment there is skyrocketing. But, here, the country is pulling its own plug. "Austerity, including sequestration, is the economic version of medieval leeching," wrote Jared Bernstein, former chief economic adviser to Vice President Joseph Biden, in the New York Times in early May. People in the Middle Ages believed a sick person needed to lose supposedly bad blood in order to regain health. "If we were the pilots who fly members of Congress home, maybe we wouldn't have had our funding cut either," says Keys, the Head Start center director. my widest claim is that the system continues to function and reflects the values of the society, if the society changes enough and enough actors make different financial decisions then the market itself reflects those changes. the market can drive some effects and gets feedback loops, but those can be worked out in time. i don't see any other system other than benevolent dictator which allows such changes to happen without revolutions. yet we've had close to four revolutions in a few hundred years and the system continues on in some form or another. sometimes with more regulation other times with less, but i think generally it works well enough. not purely how i'd like, but it's got more going for it than the government does in terms of being able to change rapidly once new information becomes widely known. ³Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.² -Lucy Parsons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Parsons Even if they got it by gaming the system. At one time we revolted against a King , and royalty. Only the names have been changed. Government, in the name of the ruling corporations, wants absolute control again. I begin to think that in many ways you actually agree with me but you are too emotionally wedded to the American Dream (the one based on a high expansion, high consumption capitalist system) i don't think you know me that well, but i don't have the time to spell it all out yet again how i live my life. in terms of reform of the system i'd go for large changes in government (including rewriting portions of the constitution and several other laws). the market would shake and shimmy as people freaked out, but that is a short-term adjustment needed to prevent an even longer term catastrophe. We have a corporate controlled government, and a corporate controlled media. Sure we have limited free speech for the present, but the government with its mushroom clouds, and smoking guns spooks enough of the population to justify most any crazy notion. In any event it gives the un-beloved Congress the plausible excuse to do things that are against our own good, like the National Defense Authorization Act. that you can't give up on staying with capitalism and claiming that it will 'work' no matter what. i don't see a viable alternative that can respond as quickly to new information. we'd need a revolution of huge proportion to change to something else. more likely we'll continue to jigger this one with policy patches and social tinkerings and the whole system will gradually change to reflect the values of the majority that comes along next. i sure hope that majority is more environmentally aware... Yes the environment is overwhelmed, and as far as we are concerned with its ability to support human life, the nurturing environment is dying. Yet, here we all sit in the water, wondering how much warmer it will get. at present i don't think it is as much as it needs to be that is why i aim my efforts at talking to people around things like gardening because at least they do understand that they can get food from a gardener. songbird At least until they see you as something that may go well with wild onions, and french fries. -- Remember Rachel Corrie http://www.rachelcorrie.org/ Welcome to the New America. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA736oK9FPg |
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