Slashdot Mirror

"Climate Change" is a natural phenomenon. The Earth's climate has always been changing, in regular intervals, since the Earth was formed. And the variations in the Earth's temperature are due to changes in the activity of the entity who warms it - the Sun. It's the variations in the Earth's temperature that lead to variations in CO2 levels, and not the other way around. And this happens with a 800 years discrepancy. (See explanation here or here.)

The whole story about "Man-Made Global Warming" is a fraud. (See this very good documentary, for example.)

The main scientists involved in this swindle have already been exposed in a scandal known as "Climategate", in which it was denounced that the data presented has been faked.

This was not only exposed in the so-called alternative media, but has also been talked about in the mainstream one.

(I'm surprised that the people at slashdot don't seem to have read about this(?)...)

You are all being brainwashed and lied to. And this whole story is only a big excuse to preserve valuable natural resources for the elites promoting this lie.

And no, I'm not an ignorant person who doesn't read newspapers (controlled by this same persons). I'm a person who also swallowed this fraud for about 10 years, until I realized I was being lied to.

here's a better link showing US real manufacturing output, and US manufacturing jobs since 1975:
http://archive.mises.org/17964/u-s-manufacturing-output/

The kind of slippery slope towards more and more blind zeal and further-reaching powers from agents of every kind of administration (private or public, it makes little difference) was at the center of Ludwig von Mises' 1944 short book Bureaucracy. He tried to explain why and how this happens in terms of systemic incentives and asymetry of information:
- promotion works mainly on seniority inside a bureaucracy, thus the top bureaucrats are restricted in their long-term planning by having their own retirement as an event horizon, and having grown a bias towards the statu quo ; while the newly appointed officials are being selected only on their then characteristics (good grades and diplomas mostly), and then all innovation and vigor they might have is sucked out by the subordinate positions they are forced to go through and the fact that none of it will matter much, if at all, to their advancement.
- having no market appraisal of the value of their action (which is not the same as there being no value to it, please mind), they they get no valuations of their own initiatives or actions from the rest of society, and they have no guidance for allocating their efforts and resources across many tasks and priorities, they cannot know how good or bad a job they're doing, except through conforming blindly to the rules and laws they enforce, and enforcing them as closely to the letter as they can - 'doing a good bureaucrat's job' often equates 'not doing anything that triggers the ire of your hierarchical superiors'
- being on the side that enforces the law often makes them forget that they, too, are subject to it, especially when things like due process hampers their enforcement of the law ; this creates a double standard in their mind where the law is never applied strictly and widely enough to the general population, and always too tightly and too often to themselves
- serving in an administration often has the perverse effect of turning the means at the disposal of the agents, into ends of their own:

The dictatorial nutrition expert wants to feed his fellow citizens according to his own ideas about perfect alimentation. He wants to deal with men as the cattle breeder deals with his cows. He fails to realize that nutrition is not an end in itself but the means for the attainment of other ends. The farmer does not feed his cow in order to make it happy but in order to attain some end which the well-fed cow should serve. There are various schemes for feeding cows. Which one of them he chooses depends on whether he wants to get as much milk as possible or as much meat as possible or something else. Every dictator plans to rear, raise, feed, and train his fellow men as the breeder does his cattle. His aim is not to make the people happy but to bring them into a condition which renders him, the dictator, happy. He wants to domesticate them, to give them cattle status. The cattle breeder also is a benevolent despot.

If you are interested in another point of view I reccomend this book.

http://mises.org/rothbard/agd.pdf

It's clear you're just barely reading what I'm writing; I don't know whether your reading comprehension is generally poor or you just have too much mental baggage to allow for making sense of what I'm saying.

i'm not aware of any case where the free market has built actual infrastructure with no involvement from government.

I already sent you a link. You should actually try reading things some time.

You can't centrally plan a conversion to a privatized system, especially one based on contracts with, I presume, the government. The key is evolution, not revolution.

Your example is a poor one, and it reminds me of the Robber Barons canard.

In general, Austrians take only one axiom (that humans act in attempts to better their lives), while other schools of economics take several.

Additionally, Austrians recognize the inability to run full-detailed simulations of the economy which give reliable results (The Calculation Problem). I feel if I elaborate any more on the matter, I will do injustice to the Austrian school (I am rude of tongue).

If you would like to learn more about the Calculation Problem with regards to Mises and his explanation of it, I'd recommend reading about it here. I will affix a warning to my previous sentence, that if you are of a delicate political or economic nature, such that you cringe, despair, or evince a developed opinion with regards to the usage of words like 'Socialism', as most Americans are either for or against, you may pass over, or otherwise read the linked text with colored vision; if you are the kind of person is easily inflamed or are prone to confirmation bias, you may save yourself some time and emotional distress by avoiding the reading of the linked text.

Just like there are licensed and non-licensed practitioners of all manner of other professions. You don't need someone who spent 30 years in school to set a broken bone, though you would probably want one for your gallstone removal. But we have practically the same level of requirements for both procedures, which is why it costs tens of thousands of dollars to set a fucking bone.

Read this: http://mises.org/daily/4276

I notice you don't ask WHY it costs so much to set a leg, have a baby, or treat a disease. I think you might ought to read this: http://mises.org/daily/4276

Gold:
[_] Cashless
[x] High-Value
[x] Anonymous

You're really referring to fiat currency and not cash-carrying in a broad sense. Although given that the penny's metal now has intrinsically more value than its decree, anything can change. Imagine how valuable paper bills would become if some catastrophe destroyed the world's forests? (Let's assume it also destroys book scanners. ;)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krugerrand#History
http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2011/07/13/bernanke-fights-ron-paul-in-congress-golds-not-money/
http://archive.mises.org/19274/central-banks-gold-is-money/

But it can work.
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/04/27/can-gold-be-used-as-a-currency/

Government-enforced utility monopolies come from city ownership of roads. How would libertarians divvy up utilities' access to tear up city streets?

Kinsella: Against Intellectual Property, pages 19 - 21:

"Advocates of IP often justify it on utilitarian grounds. Utilitarians hold that the “end” of encouraging more innovation and creativity justifies the seemingly immoral “means” of restricting the freedom of individuals to use their physical property as they see fit. But there are three fundamental problems with justifying any right or law on strictly utilitarian grounds."

"First, let us suppose that wealth or utility could be maximized by adopting certain legal rules; the “size of the pie” is increased. Even then, this does not show that these rules are justified."

"In addition to ethical problems, utilitarianism is not coherent."

"Finally, even if we set aside the problems of interpersonal utility comparisons and the justice of redistribution and we plow ahead, employing standard utilitarian measurement techniques, it is not at all clear that IP laws lead to any change—either an increase or a decrease—in overall wealth."

http://mises.org/daily/2632/

"A clue to the copyright fallacy should be obvious from wandering through a typical bookstore chain. You will see racks and racks of classic books, presented with beautiful covers, fancy bindings, and in a variety of sizes and shapes. The texts therein are "public domain," which isn't a legal category as such: it only means the absence of copyright protection."

"But they sell. They sell well. And no, the authors are not misidentified on them. The Bronte sisters are still the authors of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. Victor Hugo still wrote Les Miserables. Mark Twain wrote Tom Sawyer. The much-predicted disaster of an anti-IP world is nowhere in evidence: there are still profits, gains from trade, and credit is given where credit is due."

When I see him on Russia Today or Alex Jones, he comes across as if he is. (shrug). I'm glad he's on the libertarian side of the diamond. All his articles are spot on: http://mises.org/daily/author/205/Jeffrey-A-Tucker

...do you want to be the next target of this internet troll? I would caution against the use of the word "extortion".

Remember the guy who invented the term "patent troll"? He did that because his use of the phrase "patent extortion" brought a libel suit. Just like Penn & Teller's show, "Bullshit", they're using a negative (but subjective!) term to criticize people who probably have it coming, but the terminology gets them off any legal hooks for libel.

Posting anon because I've been moderating... couldn't help myself.

Corrected link, sorry: http://mises.org/books/inflationinfrance.pdf

...As has been stated before, it's a question of backing. Government-issued currencies are backed up by a promise from the government that they will accept them in payment for taxes and, often, by a legal requirement for merchants to accept them within the relevant country's borders. This guarantees that you will be able to exchange them for goods or services in the future, for as long as the government survives, although it does not guarantee that they will retain the same value.

(emphasis mine)

I wanted to make the very important point that promises can be and are broken.

I would highly recommend the short book Fiat Money Inflation in France by Andrew D. White, the founder and first president of Cornell University. It can be read online for free at: https://mises.org/store/Fiat-Money-Inflation-in-France-P435C1.aspx but I would encourage you to purchase a print copy (for cheap) here: https://mises.org/store/Fiat-Money-Inflation-in-France-P435C1.aspx.

Regarding the assertion that governments and merchants will accept a currency as long as the government survives, I am glad you added the caveat about no guarantee of value, for that is important, but more importantly governments have and most probably will in the future completely change currencies. You may or may not have an opportunity to exchange.

...As has been stated before, it's a question of backing. Government-issued currencies are backed up by a promise from the government that they will accept them in payment for taxes and, often, by a legal requirement for merchants to accept them within the relevant country's borders. This guarantees that you will be able to exchange them for goods or services in the future, for as long as the government survives, although it does not guarantee that they will retain the same value.

(emphasis mine)

I wanted to make the very important point that promises can be and are broken.

I would highly recommend the short book Fiat Money Inflation in France by Andrew D. White, the founder and first president of Cornell University. It can be read online for free at: https://mises.org/store/Fiat-Money-Inflation-in-France-P435C1.aspx but I would encourage you to purchase a print copy (for cheap) here: https://mises.org/store/Fiat-Money-Inflation-in-France-P435C1.aspx.

Regarding the assertion that governments and merchants will accept a currency as long as the government survives, I am glad you added the caveat about no guarantee of value, for that is important, but more importantly governments have and most probably will in the future completely change currencies. You may or may not have an opportunity to exchange.

Produce? I can have a garden, or again, buy local.

Why would you buy local (assuming it is not cheaper)?

Please see http://www.mises.org/books/defending.pdf, chapter 23 - The Importer

Importers make the economy grow.

Because his ethical goal is environmental, not economic. Shipping is subsidized in a sense as environmental costs are not properly counted into the price. The environmental cost lowers the productivity of the world. If the shipping company were doing something like capturing carbon released and adding the extra cost to the produce, then your argument is valid (from a CO2 perspective at least).

Certain morals have value to people and they're willing to spend money on them, like spending more on local or fair trade produce or even wasting money advertising against gay marriage. That is capitalism. Of course for capitalism to function, consumers require accurate information and that doesn't just magically happen...

Produce? I can have a garden, or again, buy local.

Why would you buy local (assuming it is not cheaper)?

Please see http://www.mises.org/books/defending.pdf, chapter 23 - The Importer

Importers make the economy grow.

Produce? I can have a garden, or again, buy local.

Why would you buy local (assuming it is not cheaper)?

Please see http://www.mises.org/books/defending.pdf , chapter 23 - The Importer

Importers make the economy grow.

"At gunpoint"? Yes, that's ultimately true. So let's look at your alternative. Suppose I'm in your utopia, and I claim an unclaimed piece of land. I drill for oil, find some, and start pumping. Only my oil operation, with its noise, smells, and deadly hydrogen sulphide emissions, interferes with your ability to enjoy and make use of your adjacent land for farming. How will this dispute be resolved?

In a free society, you would have something like this.

By the way, how do you propose to use the government to solve such a dispute? Because the government, back in the 1800s, eliminated the use of the court system to seek relief against polluters. See what happens when you have one system trying to monopolize solutions? They can take it away from you just as fast as they gave it to you.

Your philosophy either ignores human nature

Actually, the exact opposite is true. Libertarianism is probably the one philosophy that both understands human nature---petty, greedy, self-interested, not at all altrustic---and tries to work with human nature as it is, rather than condemn and punish it, or try to change it.

Libertarians aren't going to try to force people to be charitable ("welfare," "social security") and then wonder why this does nothing but create anger and resentment. Libertarians aren't going to wonder why giving all this free money to people seems to do nothing but make them less likely to ever want to get back to being productive citizens. Some people are charitable; most aren't. Libertarianism is about fostering private, voluntary charity without trying to force the uncharitable to go along with it.

Libertarians aren't going to try to fundamentally change human nature like the communists did ("If only all the workers would all work together and support each other..."), and then wonder why this does nothing but create shortages. Some people are cooperative; many aren't. Libertarianism is about fostering private, voluntary cooperation (free-market businesses) without trying to force the selfish and loners to go along with the group.

Libertarians understand that people are going to be greedy and selfish, and try to come up with ways of making society work in light of this--not against it. Libertarians aren't going to try to tax, regulate, and punish these basic and inescapable human behaviors, and then wonder why no one is willing to work anymore. Some people are really greedy; many aren't. Libertarianism is about fostering people's natural desire to have things into productive labor, productive industry, and wealth creation, not trying to suppress these natural desires and then wondering why people turn to fraud, graft, the depredations we've seen in the world financial system, and so on.

Libertarians aren't pacifists and have no problem with "pointing guns"---when its a justifiable act of self-defense against the initiation of force, as understood by the Non-Aggression Principle. What libertarians have a problem with is the initiation of force---or worse, the insistence that sometimes that initiation is actually moral if it's done by a "legitimate" group (the government).

Getting back to the guns, well, yes, somebody, some agency that at least tries to be impartial, is necessary to both referee disputes like the one I outlined above, and to make sure that the (often temporarily) powerful, don't crush the (often temporarily) weak. And yes, sometimes, this requires guns. I know you still disagree with me ...

Except what the government does with its guns is far from just "referee disputes" nowadays. If all we had was a government that, as in the late 1700s, merely protected "life, liberty,

Keep the state out of science? that makes no sense. Have you been paying attention?

Why? Because some people believe doom and damnation is coming if we don't do something? Devout religionists assert that belief in their religion is the difference between damnation and salvation, too. So the State should get back involved in making sure people's souls are saved?

Of course you make regulations to limit that. What the hell else do you do? AS has been proven, the market won't fix it.

Really. Read this article on free-market solutions to water and air pollution. Here's the pertinent section:

[T]he American courts, during the late -- and as far back as the early 19th century made the deliberate decision to allow property rights to be violated by industrial smoke. To do so, the courts had to -- and did -- systematically change and weaken the defenses of property right embedded in Anglo-Saxon common law. Before the mid and late 19th century, any injurious air pollution was considered a tort, a nuisance against which the victim could sue for damages and against which he could take out an injunction to cease and desist from any further invasion of his property rights. But during the 19th century, the courts systematically altered the law of negligence and the law of nuisance to permit any air pollution which was not unusually greater than any similar manufacturing firm, one that was not more extensive than the customary practice of fellow polluters.

The article goes on to provide a few examples of specific cases, including one that eliminated the ability of collective victims (e.g., residents of an entire city) to use the common-law class-action process to enjoin polluters.

Does that sound like market failure to you? Or does it sound like the government itself caused the problem we now face, by passing laws and judgments giving immunity to polluters decades ago, and now the government wants to solve this problem---of its own making---by doing the only thing it knows how, passing more laws and regulations?

When you argument is to make lies about the science You Are Wrong. its time to stop and change your position because You Are Wrong.

The "argument" here isn't on the science---it's what the government is trying to justify doing to people by using the science. When a person is trying to defend themselves against coercion, it's perfectly natural that they might resort to lying. If a victim of an inchoate robbery is able to ward off the thief by lying to him, don't you think that's a perfectly moral course of action?

If a comet was going to hit the earth in 10 years, would you lie about it because it will cost tax money to divert?

One, why are you so sure it would cost tax money to divert?

Two, this question isn't an analogy to climate change. A more accurate question would be along the lines of "If a comet had a one in three chance of hitting the Earth, and then those odds were reduced to one in 1,000 only after comet-impact advocates had spent decades hyping the threat..." Climate change may be true; I'm not disputing that. But its ultimate effects are far from certain, and even some of its own proponents are now admitting the certain disasters they were predicting are overblown.

Would I lie about it? No. I try to get people to concentrate on the crux of the issue: The immorality of thieving from people to support issues others feel are important. But if some people want to defend themselves against that theft using other tactics, such as lying, that's their business.

Rothbard wrote about how to deal with pollution. The pertinent paragraph:

But in the case of air pollution we are dealing not so much with private property in the air as with protecting private property in one's lungs, fields, and orchards. The vital fact about air pollution is that the polluter sends unwanted and unbidden pollutants -- from smoke to nuclear radiation to sulfur oxides -- through the air and into the lungs of innocent victims, as well as onto their material property. All such emanations which injure person or property constitute aggression against the private property of the victims. Air pollution, after all, is just as much aggression as committing arson against another's property or injuring him physically. Air pollution that injures others is aggression pure and simple.

We don't regulate electric, natural gas, or sewer companies because they are utilities. We regulate them because they are natural monopolies

According to TJ DiLorenzo's "The Myth of Natural Monopoly" (PDF), all the natural monopolies that people ordinarily associate with public utilities originate with the city's natural monopoly on roads and the city's resulting inability to find an efficient price for permits to tear them up to install conduit.

You can squeeze 100 fibers into the space of one sewer pipe. There is no reason why we should be limited to just one company

In that case, why should people be limited to one power company or one wired pay-TV company? How many power lines can one squeeze into a sewer pipe?

Or building your roads.

Wow, it took an entire half hour for someone to toss off that canard? Read and learn.

Or educating kids.

Oh, you're funny. Have you set foot in an American starter-prison lately? Don't confuse indoctrination with education.

paying people to make sure Johnson & Johnson don't leave metal shards in your tylenol

Did some idiot teacher at a government school give you this asinine fantasy that vendors can make more money by killing their customers?

every dollar Apple keeps WILL go toward pushing impoverished Chinese people toward suicide

How, by giving them far better pay that they can get at other jobs in China? Do a bit of research: Foxconn workers have a lower suicide rate than every single state in the USA.

Go troll somewhere else.

That's advice you should take. Try educating yourself a bit before you do though, so you won't embarrass yourself like this again.

-jcr

The fact that Morgenthau was writing what he did 7 years into the New Deal is evidence enough for me... but it is hardly the only evidence that exists.

Do you really expect me to supply an analysis of Depression-era economics here on Slashdot?

But since you asked, here are a couple of sources:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123353276749137485.html

http://mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=258

You're using a law not currently on the books,

Really?

which caused people to either leave the country in droves, or lose a bullshit war (much like the current ones),

The draft was also used in WW II. In fact, the country was founded with conscription.

Of course, your original point was that it was somehow "not the duty" of the government to compel behavior "expense of perceived harm." This notion of "perceived" harm is crazy enough, but I just wanted to point out that governments can clearly compel citizens to pay the ultimate price.

Whether or not the government chooses to use one of its tools is a matter of policy, but there's no question that the government has the right to compel behavior that will serve the common good. Or are you saying that the Constitution does not allow the government to "provide for the common defence [sic]" or "promote the general Welfare"?

Read this: http://mises.org/daily/5968/Laundered-Money

In Swedish cities, cash is no longer acceptable on public buses ... Many small businesses refuse cash

It seems we have a global push for cash-free economy. ASAP. Privacy be damned.

Nice. I was just about to post that myself.

I expect cash might be outlawed in the USA in my lifetime.

Cash is convenient, but given an incentive, organized crime will develop a way of doing anonymous transactions. Probably not Tide, though, that sounds like a story picked up from The Onion.

Correct.

This is a short and extremely informative read on the history and motivations of public schooling. The story goes back at least as far as Calvinists and the Prussians.

http://mises.org/document/2689/

No, it is how a FASCIST medical system works. And that is exactly what we have, and have had for a hundred years: http://mises.org/daily/4276

Here is a great essay called, "Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution" by Murray Rothbard.
http://mises.org/rothbard/lawproperty.pdf

In the libertarian theory unused property comes into ownership through homesteading which basically mean you have to start using unused land. The same theory exists with air/water pollution, noise, and radio waves.

So if an airport is build far away from people it homesteads the right to make the noise associated with running an airport. Anyone that decided to move nearby has to accept that level of noise. If people still move in then the level of noise the airport makes cannot be increased say by landing a new jet that is louder than previous aircraft. This is because it is a nuisance to the other property owners. This is the same reason an airport couldn't be built in a populated area without violating peoples property rights.

If a coal plant is built in a remote area where it's exhaust cannot be detected by surrounding property owners they have gained a right to pollute that air. If someone moves into that area they do so with the knowledge that the coal plant pollutes there. But if people move in anyway they can't sue to stop the pollution. But they can sue if the plant increases the pollution.

The same with a river. If before anyone owned property downstream on the river a meat packing plant moved there and polluted the river they would have homesteaded the right to pollute that river. That isn't very likely. There were most likely owners of property on the river before any industry. Therefore anyone that polluted the river would be violating everyone downstream property rights and they could sue for damages.You can have a class action lawsuit by all plaintiffs against a single polluter.

In reality a libertarian system would have a much cleaner environment because anyone could sue for damages. The EPA exists to protect businesses from lawsuits. It sets a legal limit where companies can pollute to where they face no threat of lawsuit. Also they don't get sued for damages but are fined by the government which leaves the property owners that had their property damaged with no recourse.

You're talking complete rubbish. Copyright and patent monopolies are thoroughtly incompatible with private property and free market economies. This is not even vaguely debatable.

http://mises.org/against.pdf

"Though in the US I would argue if something is moral, it should be legal, the converse (something being immoral, yet still legal) however is frequently not the case, nor should it be in many cases where it does no legal harm."

I think there is a typo there, because the latter part of the sentence says that something that is immoral should not be legal, where it does no harm. Isn't that the opposite of what you meant?

Regardless, I recommend that all who are reading this conversation also read Vices Are Not Crimes by Lysander Spooner (1875). Spooner discusses this topic at length and concludes, for a number of reasons, that laws against acts that do no harm to others are bad laws, no matter how immoral one perceives those acts to be.

Nothing less is satisfactory. Copyright and patent monopolies are a cancer growing in western civilisation. We need to excise them before it's too late.

• http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm
• http://mises.org/against.pdf
• http://piratpartiet.se/international

Constantly full waiting rooms are not an unavoidable fact of life, but a product of a "priceless" supply system. Here is an excellent article on the subject: http://mises.org/daily/4719

The only exception should be any natural monopolies.

And the existence of those is disputed.

The "Tragedy of the Commons" occurs because of a lack of private property rights. Quite the opposite: If there were no public land, and every parcel was owned by someone (roads included) you would find that the owners would keep up after their property. I encourage you to at least read a few pages from this abstract on the Privatization of Roads and Highways, by Walter Block.

Naw...The collection of prior art will collapse the patent system long before that happens. This article http://mises.org/daily/5025/The-Fight-Against-Intellectual-Property has some good arguments that I see as a prediction that "common sense" will return to patent law. I am intrigued by the argument that patents are a government monopoly-granting process allowing IP holders to attack the property rights of others.

And human creativity shows no sign of being finite, so I suspect that different solutions will keep appearing.

But, in light of "the book every American needs to read right now" on Huck's show, your should have plugged http://mises.org/books/thelaw.pdf , which dissects the point you were making perfectly!

Thanks for this and you other comments below, let's keep up the good fight (stalemate in RF today, hope for a win in USA next year).

In Liberty,

Pavel B.

environmentalism has a monetary and resource cost.

A "good envirohnment" is a luxury good. It exists somewhere on the taxonomy of needs.

http://mises.org/daily/5586/Environmental-Protection-Is-a-Consumption-Good

Humans must consume resources to progress. The typical malthusan approach to statist environmentalism is that we must STOP consuming resources now to maintain our current (or usually, a greatly reduced) standard of existance.

A different argument is that we must consume the right resources as fast as possible in the right way, so that we, for instance, move past fossil fuels, or that we can increase agricultural yeilds consistently, or so that we can mass produce medicines.

The fact of the matter is that different socities -- differentiated primarily by wealth and industrial sophistication -- will be impacted differently by whatever climactic changes and calamities may occur over the future.

We cannot be sure what will happen to whom and when.

We _can_ be sure of one thing: a society that has greatly increased its wealth and standard of living, via the correct social attitudes and practices, will be in a much better position to deal with (and hopefully avoid!) whatever comes than one which is stuck in a counter-productive regressive past.

I contend that rather than freeze or reverse the growth in the worlds standard of living, we accelerate it and distribute it far and wide, so that we have more capable minds (because IMO, intelligence is distributed vastly across the world, but access to making a difference is NOT) in a position to tackle problems.

I want a nice environment. And I'm willing to pay for it. But I want to be choosy about how I spend my dollars and what I'll be getting. I suspect if you polled the majority of Americans, they'd accept a 1ft sea level rise in 100 years if it meant not having a calamitous impact on their way of life, way of government, etc.

This is not morally problematic unless you consider the impact on impoverished coastal societies. And my contention is that as a planet, we are more likely to raise the standard of living of ALL humans in 100 years than we are to turn back the clock of world progress. We may acheive the latter, but it will probably coincide with vastly more human suffering than if we just let some nations flood - even assuming we did nothing to help those nations progress in the interim.

Progress takes resources. But progress leads to more efficient usage of resources. We are not suffering under the hardship of "Peak Whale", even though at one time in our history the number of remaining whales left put a dire forecast on our abilities to create heat and light. Mankind adapted and moved forward.

We can adapt and move forward, so long as we live in socities that allow for the creation of wealth and the execution of great ideas.

I am not suggesting the USA of 2011 is the right place to foster the innovation (primarily in attitudes, btw) we need to lift the entire planet out of destitution, but it certainly could be.

Schiff: http://www.schiffradio.com/b/Pentonomics---The-Cause-and-Evidence-of-Inflation/419269008642342955.html
Schiff consistently explains inflation as an increase in the money supply throughout his work. More can be read here (why not listen to the guys that were right?):
http://www.europac.net/research_analysis/commentary_view/Peter%20Schiff

Hazlitt/Mises: http://mises.org/daily/2914

Schiff: http://www.schiffradio.com/b/Pentonomics---The-Cause-and-Evidence-of-Inflation/419269008642342955.html
Schiff consistently explains inflation as an increase in the money supply throughout his work. More can be read here (why not listen to the guys that were right?):
http://www.europac.net/research_analysis/commentary_view/Peter%20Schiff

Hazlitt/Mises: http://mises.org/daily/2914

...with renewable sources of energy. What happened? Solar collector killed your dog or something?

Tossing those "after only 30 or 40 years of development" statements doesn't make you sound insightful but spiteful.
Yes! Technology takes time to develop and improve! Whodathunkit!?

Again. Look at the map. Read the map. Notice all the hydro, geothermal, and biomass - those are backups.
And I can't keep repeating myself over and over trying to explain how all those problems you list are already solved or are in the process of being solved - like the political situation.

And there is oil enough to last centuries. Problem is it will become more and more expensive to produce.
There is no danger of "energy crisis" or people starving to death for the lack of power to run the food making machines.
There is a prospect of everyone not independently rich having to change their lifestyle though.
You don't really need to own two or more cars, or take a car driving to the shop two blocks down, or eat prepackaged, precooked food, or use all those single-use-then-throw-away plastic materials.

As for "new, unproven technology" - so was nuclear. Still is, up to a point. Also, commercial HVDC predates nuclear reactors.
And nuclear does NOT limit country's dependence on foreign nations' stability - political, economic or as was the case with Japan recently - geological.
EU gets only about 3% of its uranium from its own sources.

NOT getting off of the foreing oil, uranium and gas tit is "playing with the devil" for EU.

As for Howard C. Hayden...
With all due respect, a man who equates South Pole with Antarctica is either deliberately trying to make a strawman, ignorant to the point that someone should take a look into how he got those diplomas and titles he holds, OR far too passionate about the topic he is arguing to be reasonable to any degree.
Either case, there is too much noise in his signal to be of any practical use to anyone but the people who want to debunk either him or science in general.

Oh rubbish. The author made HIS copy, not all copies. Only copies exist. Only copies are physical things. If you don't want something copied further, don't fucking release it. Copyight monopoly is a market-destroying privilege, not a right.

http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm

Your understanding of value is also primitive. Things don't have one value, value is subjective.

http://mises.org/austecon/chap4.asp

Once Watt's patents were secured and production started, a substantial portion of his energy was devoted to fending off rival inventors. In 1782, Watt secured an additional patent, made "necessary in consequence of ... having been so unfairly anticipated, by [Matthew] Wasborough in the crank motion". More dramatically, in the 1790s, when the superior Hornblower engine was put into production, Boulton and Watt went after him with the full force of the legal system.

During the period of Watt's patents the United Kingdom added about 750 horsepower of steam engines per year. In the thirty years following Watt's patents, additional horsepower was added at a rate of more than 4,000 per year. Moreover, the fuel efficiency of steam engines changed little during the period of Watt's patent; while between 1810 and 1835 it is estimated to have increased by a factor of five.

As far as I'm concerned, Microsoft has held back the progress of computing by possibly some 15 years from what we could have now...

a) examples?
b) try looking for it. Start at http://mises.org/ which is dedicated to offering solutions to getting out of this crisis.

The last time this issue came up on Slashdot, the (L)ibertarians came out of the woodwork, blaming my parents for building a house somewhere where there's no broadband, despite the fact that they built the house in 1985. Which is about as rational as blaming settlers in the 1700's for not building cities where the interstates were going to be.

I think they were trying to suggest that your parents sell their house and buy another one.

Freshman economics tells you that some business don't behave well under the usual free-market rules, and thus need to be heavily regulated. Those business are called "natural monopolies", which is why gas, electricity, sewage, roads, phone (hah!) are provided by either public utilities, or publicly-regulated private utilities.

Other economists claim that natural monopoly is a myth, and effects attributed to natural monopoly are in fact caused by 1. local government ownership of roads and 2. local government's failure to efficiently value permits to tear up those roads to install pipes, conduits, etc.

Multiple companies waste megabucks on multiple plant/staff/management. They waste further megabucks on advertising, trying to steal profitable customers from each other in a zero-sum game.

So why doesn't Coke merge with Pepsi?

At least Judas had the sense to hold out for 30 pieces of silver.

Which are thought to be Tyrian shekels of 1.38 troy ounces each. At current price of 35 USD per troy ounce, Judas turned in Jesus for less than $1,500.