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China Planning For Sustainable Cities
TapeCutter writes "In a BBC article William McDonough says, 'The Stone Age did not end because humans ran out of stones. It ended because it was time for a re-think about how we live.' The Chineese appear to agree with him and have commissioned McDonough's company to create an environmentally sustainable village as a pilot project for the more ambitious idea of sustainable cities. McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart have also written a book on the subject, Cradle to Cradle, previously reviewed here on Slashdot."
The book was really dry, but very informative, and from an engineering standpoint fascinating. I recommend it.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
China would have a much easier job of planning like this when the people there can't challenge the government.
In a free country that lived by the rule of law, the people have a right to object and challenge such reshaping of the land. Not in China, sadly.
If this were anywhere but China I doubt this would do anything but fail. Once people have tasted a style of living they do no want to go back down. As evidenced by bank robbers you need to keep on robbing because they are burning tens of thosands of dollars a week on drugs.
Sorry to sound like a cynic, but it's this kind of innovation that our IP laws will obstruct. Someone in the U.S. and the E.U. will get a patent on the very idea of sustainable cities and cause the whole thing to get bogged down in licensing.
seeing as most of there current cities are polluted beyond repair. Clean drinking water from the tap? I guess if you're cholera-resistant.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
You mean like the ones the Greeks had over 2000 years ago?
I guess China is preparing for the peak oil event. We should be doing that same in North America.
> Censorship of Internet access so the citizens don't know the cities aren't
> really environmentally sustainable
No, the next step is using it to press the US to change their policy (re Kyoto etc), and make them look bad.
Are they going to have internet in that city?
What does your Credit Report look like?
If we are going to survive this type of development is what is required. The rate of development in the world with former developing countries not only approaching western levels of living, but western levels of consumption, in accelerating not slowing. While people make not want to "go backwards" in terms of how they live, it may be the only alternative if they want to live.
Whether or not this particular project will succeed, sustainable cities are coming and it's a good thing. Right now, it runs contrary to the type of lifestyle promoted in the west as the very economy is based on consumption.
Ultimately we are going to have to choose to control that consumption. That has only really shown up so far in the emergence of hybrid cars etc, though that is largely due to a desire to wean ourselves off oil controlled by hostile regimes. Fear of what the environment is going to become really isn't taken seriously yet.
But the innovation will continue, as China is both influential and strong. They will simply move to disregard both American and European claims of intellectual ownership.
Do you like German cars?
I recently came back from China on a business trip... I stayed in a expensive hotel... and they warned me at the front desk that I should use bottled water for everything. Not just drinking, but brushing my teeth, washing my face etc..
If I needed more water for such activities all I had to do was call the front desk and they provide it free of charge.
Would such a society benefit from being separated from the outside world? Obviously a city can't be self-sustainable if its citizens wants things from outside the city. It seems to me that this concept just isn't practical, mainly because of the level of interdependence and globalization we've developed in the more modern nations.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
The only logical way to keep billions of people happy in the future is by using nanotech to manufacture/mantain/recycle every item we need (including cities). Our current technological state, both in material manufacturing and medical technologies will be viewed and stone-age tech in about 15 to 20 years from now. We'd had better hurry and develop advanced nano as we are currently running out of resources and our oil-based ecomomies cannot stand both North America/Europe/China/India all vying for the same resources using current tech. We also need nano to advance us out of the medical stone age we currently find ourselves in and gain control over the geneome and using nano to repair our bodies. Anything else is a waste of time and the limited resources we now have.
sounds kinda like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, you know, that wonder of the ancient world
this link brought to you by the People's Republic of China
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
The whole World needs to shake up things on a massive scale at some point in time - the way we live is obviously not good for the planet. Now this can be done gradually for the RICH nations - but for the most populous nation on the planet? No, we should be thankful China isn't a democracy right now - because they can hopefully drive through painful remedies we can't! China has an obligation to it's own citizens to do it BEFORE they are given democracy. If democratic rules were applied they would never be able to change - and that would not only mean a danger to China's wealth and health - but that of the whole world!
Penn Jillette and Raymond Teller's (Penn & Teller) great show Bullshit did a great show last season on recycling. In short, recycling does allow reuse of some resources, but does not appear to damage less environment, or use less energy, or even consume much less space than just throwing everything away.
As far as the pure basis for modern cities are concerned, would this lead to a truly successful competitive society as a first priority? I'd certainly hope so - and applaud China for looking into it, but I don't know if "sustainability" in this sense is necissaruly efficient, long-term compared to using the best resources for the circumstances.
Ryan Fenton
Oh, for a second there I thought you were talking about seating. A sustainable sit would be nice, these damn office chairs are murder.
Hei, it should be 'Chinese', not 'Chineese'
It's not interesting it's stupid. Not every problem in the world centers around IP laws and the answer isn't always free stuff. Profits drive innovation sadly. Take away the incentive and you take away much of the innovation. Some of the IP issues are like frivolous lawsuits in that they should have never been granted the patent in the first place but cutting the heart out of patent laws isn't the answer. Starting to be a constant drone about IP laws even worse than the Microsoft bashing was. Don't mod people up because it's trending. It's like screaming Manchester in a certain pub so you get a cheer. It's a cheap shot.
Yup, you're a cynic. A realist would know that it's the vested interests (real estate developers, big box retailers, and purblind NIMBYism) that will keep this from happening in the U.S.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Profits drive innovation sadly.
In the case of sustainibility, survival drives innovation, not profit. Or, in the immortal words of Plato, "Necessity, who is the mother of invention."
This is fascinating to read about. I often lament the state of most older cities today because their infrastructure is so old and decrepit its populus suffers from being behind the times in technology and other areas. San Francisco actually has very poor broadband internet access options, for example. I would always dream about living in a futuristic Jetsons-esque city one day, but I don't believe that will ever happen because cities like New York are far too massive and old to get reinvented. The costs alone limit this possibility. The opportunities at China's door today are boundless. Leave it to forward thinking communists to teach the west about enlightened progress.
Would the "green"/"sustainable"/"quality of life" innovations of living in this city happen to include not being beaten when taken into police custody?
Just curious...
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
You know Barney, this working with stone tools is so ice age. I mean, we are settled now. We have shoes and clothes. We are modern men.
I know what you mean Fred. We are no longer uncivilized. My family does not have to eat whatever happens to walk or grow nearby. I have a farm and domisticated animals. I can't be using my father tools. I need more!
And howdy. Instead of using wood and stone, why don't we go down to the walmart and by those new fangled bronze tools. They will let us plow the land so much better.
Yeah, let's rethink how we live. We need to move into te common era with bronze, and even those really expensive new iron tools. And I can't wait until that Jaquard Loom lets us have really fancy patterns in the woven cloth that will be developed any day now.
Which is simply to say mostly we do not rethink how we live. We master new materials, and the processes to create tools from those materials, and society just tends to naturally reform aroun the advantages, making our lives more confortable in the process. Mostly this has involved allowing us to stay in one place without a flea infestation.
The most annoying part of our civilization is the emergence of the useless marketing talk and the related jibberish.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
This sounds very very similiar to this. http://www.aeonflux.com/
Charlize Theron is the new Natalie Portman.
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When you want to type a double-quote use " instead
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Oh, regarding the first-strike doctrine, it is nothing the USA have not done, and are not doing now IIRC.
You cannot patent ideas.
You can only receive a patent on an invention that:
1. is described in enough detail in the patent application so that others can build it without undue experimentation
2. does not have prior art
3. is not obvious or anticipated by prior art
4. and more...
Read the FAQ at www.uspto.gov to see why it is not possible to get a patent on an idea.
The entire premise of the patent system is that the FIRST inventor receive sufficient incentives to FULLY disclose ALL the details so that the general public can have access to the solution.
The incentive is the temporary monopoly that expires around 15 years after the patent is granted.
This means fewer trade secrets and reduced need to reverse engineer (because the 'recipe' must be fully disclosed).
China, peaceful? Perhaps you've never heard of the Chinese EMPIRE. They've had several of them. China was a brutal conqueror long before Japan took their own shot in WW2. What always shocks me about the mindset of people coming out of China is that they don't seem to care about truth, or human rights, or even justice really, they have been so brainwashed by their government. Mostly, they're just afraid to stick their necks out, while their leaders bluster on threatening people right and left while they work on assimilating or exterminating ethnic minorities in order to make room for more Chinese people. (For example, look at what happened to Manchuria, as well as China's policies in Tibet.) Lucky for the Vietnamese, they drove out the Chinese while they had the chance. (Vietnam was actually a quasi-province of China for a long period of its history, in fact.)
For all the criticism of Americans, it is the Chinese who really take the cake for cultural insensitivity, imperialism (in the old-fashioned sense, not neo-colonialism because they're not rich enough for that yet), and disregard for the rights of all people, both within and outside their country. Oh yeah, they're also way more racist than we are, too.
If China is peaceful now, it's because they know that they will lose if it comes down to a confrontation with the USA. They don't actually have the capability to nuke the USA (they still lack the long-range missiles), they could hit Taiwan but that would be self-defeating; meanwhile they would risk having everything that they've built up in the past 100 years completely destroyed.
No doubt their space program largely aims at developing ICBM technology, so perhaps a greater threat is on the horizon. One might think that the value of trade would restrain China, but that didn't rein in Germany or Japan, and the Chinese seem quite capable of the kinds of abuses perpetrated by those powers back in the 1940's.
What if all your citizens desires could be transported from the outside via the internet. Movies, games, music and various other etertainment. You don't really need those SUVs and pretty trinkents of jewlrey to occupy your time but more or less for status symbols.
The thing about Eastern cultures is they are more about conforming or at least not standing out as they are about status symbols.
Or perhaps they are more pratical about wants and needs seeing MMOGs are more popular over there.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I wouldn't describe China as "peaceful", but they have zero interest in long distance projection. They want Taiwan, but right now, Taiwan has a better chance of invading China than the other way around. Recent western nervousness about China's increased military spending are misplaced, as the military being added to is almost worthless for anything but home defense.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
China already has sustainable cities, 1+ billion people already proves it.
Just ask anyone in their 30's who's got striped teeth due to HK's experiementation with flourinating the water. No thanks. Watsons bottled water works just fine for me.
I spend several months a year in China and have lived in HK in the past. Tap water is fine for everything except drinking/cooking.
Cheers,
This is ironic that it is a BBC article because BBC is blocked by my friendly Great Firewall of China.
This is the first time I've seen anyone really discussing this. I'm glad to see it. This is going to be an extrememly important issue in our lifetimes.
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Good reading: http://www.ishmael.com/Education/Writings/The_New
And some great books: http://www.newtribalventures.com/ntv/market/categ
eh, chinese, my spelling is not up to par :)
Well, its what is needed. No more false ecconomies.
Much respect for the Chinese in taking the step to what is needed.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0179641/
,less pretentious, funny (in places) but not necessarily more palatable .
,some of them witty,("There's no more property,so there're no more thieves" the warden says while opening the cells ),a lot of them tedious and repetitive.There was enough material to make a very good short,but 85 minutes it's inevitably too long.In a nutshell,let's stop working,let's stop producing,let's stop everything and all you need is love.Hence the title "l'an O1" (=year 01):why a 0,by the way?This is the typically "events of May 68 way of life" film."
...interesting, call it idealist anarcho-communism.
"Some movies of the seventies seem to have been made yesterday;not this one.It's in fact one of the most dated works of its era.It's some gentler version of "Themroc"
There's no story,but a spate of minisketches
The idea of the film is
No masters, no worldly possetions, ans a basic idea at the start : we have enough...do you really need a better hair dryer or a better oven ? those we already have right now are ok, no ? so lets stop, and enjoy...in the end some turn the walkways into city-gardens.
The scene I remember most is a kid playing thieve in the midle of the night with an ex-convict, they enter into a retired couple room, ask and get the jewels, and then is told by the ex-convict "put them back, that way, when you want to steal them next you'll know where they are"
a bit long, but nice really...
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
Plastic can be made from lots of different oils, not just petroleum. George Washington Carver managed to convert peanut oil to plastic.
The Stone Age did not end because humans ran out of stones.
No, but the Age of Democracy might.
Play Command HQ online
Worked for Oceania.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I read it as McDonuts MMMMMM....
I thought you said 'those Krafty Cheeese' ;D
Quite a misleading post. The headline of the article actually reads: "A senior Chinese general has warned that his country could destroy hundreds of American cities with nuclear weapons if the two nations clashed over Taiwan". Generals always have that hawkish attitude, but really they're just playing the same game as the Russians did in the cold war - conflict is avoided because both sides know it would be mutual destruction. we should keep in mind the lengths to which the Chinese would be willing to wage war against us Americans Just garbage. There is zero motivation - they are far too dependent on the US economy to want to destroy it, and the younger generation is pushing hard for US-style education & human rights.
There's a radio interview with McDonough here: http://www.aarp.org/fun/radio/pt_radio/sustainable _architecture.html
You may want to listen to it before you go off the deep end. The guy's pretty rational and amazingly farsighted.
"Is this Winkhorst a nova criminal?" "No just a technical sergeant wanted for interrogation."
Survival drives nothing currently.
People are too apathetic and see our extinction as too far off to warrant changing their lives.
If China breaks its obligations to various international organizations it is a member of, other member states will take collective action to put tariffs on select industries calculated to do maximum political damage.
The Stone Age did not end because humans ran out of stones. It ended because it was time for a re-think about how we live.
Nothing turns me off faster from reading an article than idiotic profoundness.
The Stone Age gradually faded away as more humans discovered/invented better tools that increased their chances of survival. No caveman sat around thinking much about it, it was a slow natural process.
Every last one of these initiatives are pointless.
When "sustainable" lifestyles become less expensive than "non-sustainable" lifestyles, everyone will switch. The same goes for alternative fuels, recycling, organic food, non-GM food, hybrid automobiles, ethanol, etc., etc., etc.
People make choices to maximize the benefit and minimize the cost. At least free people do.
(If that's not good enough for you, then freedom really isn't your thing. You're more into tyranny -- making peoples' choices for them, because you've decided you're better than them.)
I have a really elegant proof for Fermat's last theorem. If this sig was only a bit longer...
I have more karma than God.
That's because God posts anonymously.
The enemies of Democracy are
The problem you run into is that as you make something more efficient, it becomes more useful, and you end up consuming even more. This David Lawyer fellow has a transportation Web site where he argues that automobiles are considerably more energy efficient than the trains they replaced (steam locomotives, heavy-weight train cars), but the automobile has made possible such an explosion of travel that we are consuming many times more transportation energy than in the train days. Contrary to some expectations, the train was not particularly efficient on coal or gallon of oil per seat-mile, even with the introduction of Diesels but keeping traditional-style railroad cars, but the auto was so much more convenient that people ended up travelling more.
With autos, energy efficiency has increased sustantially in the past 20 years, SUVs not withstanding, but most of that efficiency increase has gone into a lot more driving instead of saving on oil imports.
Now we have this "New Urbanism" thing where we are trying to recreate some kind of urban golden age along the lines of a Marshall Islands cargo cult -- going through the motions without really understanding cause and effect. The new thing is to put "traffic calming devices" -- these big concrete squats in the middle of intersections. The idea is to bring back the urban golden age by putting obstacles to slow traffic down without changing any of the other variables -- the two-career household, the expectation to take kids to hockey practice, etc. -- which has the effect that everyone I see going through these things tries to "set up a line" through them without slowing down.
I suppose people will have to write in house sale contracts that all of the microwaves don't go with the house.
My ideas is that some Mafia guy will come up with a racket to get rid of the microwaves. You will go away someplace on vacation, you will come home, and as soon as you press the button to lift the garage door, you will see to your horror that someone has broken in and filled your garage to the rafters with . . . microwaves.
You're right that survival isn't driving the fledgling corporate sustainability trend, but profits really are. Cradle to Cradle describes over a dozen companies who worked with McDonough and Braungart to develop sustainable products and services that are all profitable, and in many cases are more profitable than traditional cradle-to-grave style products. From these companies' point of view, the survival/green aspect is a good marketing strategy, but that's about it. They're only really interested in upcycling for its profitability.
You might be surprised by the book. McDonough and Braungart aren't doomsday environmentalist types, but fall much more on the industry end of the spectrum, arguing that industry and the economy are just as important as the environment. Their point is simply that it's in industry's best interest to promote upcycling and green design.
i don't think the man wanted it to sound that dramatic to be honest with you.. of course we have to "think" about a particular problem, and try to solve it to the best of our capacity.. and over time, people find more flaws in their ways of doing things.. so they continously search for a better way to make their lives efficient.. of course they have to "re-think" how they are doing things.. makes perfect sense to me..
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
But china has Americas balls in the vice to speak, and American cant afford to stop buying from them.
Isnt life grand!
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
I see someone is still pissed off because no one will pay for the code they wirte.
I guess people haven't learned the lessons of fascism. Democracy is the highest good, not authoritarianism.
I don't see it, they could maybe take out most of four to five of our largest metro areas, while the U.S. retaliation would be a hailstorm of one to two thousand weapons.... Heck, I feel sorry for most of the Asian continent and half the pacific island countries in that scenario, thyroid and other cancer rates would skyrocket.
Actually, the stone age never ended. And neither did the iron age, copper age etc. Those are just labels that arise out of convenience. Think about it, why "was" there no wood age? Dividing history into "ages" based on rather arbitrary categories is convenient at best, and grossly misleading at worst.
The present Chinese regime certainly has the experience when it comes to brutally relocating their population and forcing them to live in places and ways they do not want. Maybe they can make it happen, or kill them trying.
Either way, problem solved!
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
-- Pablo Picasso
I've known plenty of environmentalists who aren't communists. The thing is, communism needs a moral justification, so they tend to inflitrate certain groups and use them as cover. During the cold war, labor unions got into huge fights with communists who had successfully subverted their union into propaganda tools. Same with environmentalists and the feminist movement. All of these things are moral philosophies based on very real, serious greivances. But each has seen its rhetoric and movements substantially subverted by communist propaganda.
Brownmiller's comments about all men being rapists and all women being raped only make sense if you consider that she's trying to overthrow a whole system and doesn't want to paint it with any redeeming qualities. This doesn't obscure the fact that rape is a real problem and a crime that, in the past, wasn't taken seriously or was brushed off.
But then, China today is not communist in practice at all. Mildly fascist, perhaps. Besides, the biggest problem in environmentalism is too many damn people. The Native American way of life would be terribly environmentally destructive if everyone practiced it.
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It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
A common misconception about alternative fuels is that once the price of oil exceeds a given threshold (like $50/barrel), the free market will immediately begin to provide competitively-priced alternatives such as biofuel, hydrogen, etc.
The problem with this is that alternative fuel production and distribution infrastructure need huge investments up-front, possibly years of ramp-up time, and require that oil continue to sell for a high price years down the road when production finally comes on-line.
A lot of investors are timid about taking this kind of risk, because in the past, high oil prices have not been sustained.
For example, back in the 80s, people invested a ton of money in the infrastructure to extract oil from shale. The problem is that oil from shale is only economical if the price of oil stays above $40/barrel for many years. The price certainly peaked above this level, but then dropped below it for over a decade. So most of the oil from shale investors lost everything.
I think the moral of this story is that as much as some like to celebrate the power of the free market to guide energy policy, it may be incapable of taking on the high-risk, long term investments required of alternative energy.
Is it just me who thinks that sustainability is the single most important factor if you're the least bit concerned about the environment?
There seems to be a lot of political environmental rhetoric out there that seems leaned towards anti-globalization and anti-development than caring about our environment. Sustainable development is concerned with understanding all the inputs and outputs of a system, and ensuring they balance out as much as possible. E.g. we require x amounts of energy, but we also generate y amount of crap - how much of that y can we turn into energy? Where do you get the shortfall from? Environmental damage is done most out of ignorance than willful destruction.
This ice cream and puppy dogs idealism fails to incorporate that the universe is in constant change. (Take for instance, a tsunami or other natural disaster's effects on the sustainable city.) Neither can the city sustain itself in the face of global technological change.
I see this as akin to trying to freeze time in place. Sorry, can't do. You gotta let nature takes it course, and try to adjust as best you can. Because, well, its gonna change over time, anyway, despite efforts to the contrary.
Sorry to sound like a cynic, but it's this kind of innovation that our IP laws will obstruct. Someone in the U.S. and the E.U. will get a patent on the very idea of sustainable cities and cause the whole thing to get bogged down in licensing.
The idea of a sustainable city would require someoem popping up with a hell dinger of a story to gain a patent. And then they'd have, at most, a decade until their patent was worthless.
Yes, patents will come into play as sustainable cities are made. But the smart thing in many of these instances is to go ahead and make the city now, and then pay the inventor afterwards if he doesn't want to play.
To say nothing of the power of eminent domain.
The first thing I did was ctrl-F for "mcdonald's" to make sure it wasn't just me.
Assume I was drunk when I posted this.
That cities will now bear a "made in china" tag? :)
Stop pulling my Chan...
Vuja De: That sinking feeling that this is going to happen again. Often occurs in meetings with Product Managers.
Since almost every thread I read under this topicseems to be pumping biofuels (bad joke, I know), I thought I'd link to an article that demonstrates some problems with this line of thought.
7 18/ap_on_bi_ge/ethanol_study
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050
The basic problem with biofuels and many other of these touted solutions to any looming oil crisis are that they are net energy losers. It's not dissimilar to Iceberg lettuce: the energy spent growing and shipping and harvesting the lettuce is many times the energy content that is ultimately delivered. Bioplastics make more sense in that you are forming a product at a high energy cost, but producing energy in an different form by using more of it is hardly a winning endeavour. We could turn coal into oil too (as the Germans did) but by so doing we're certainly not tapping some new energy source -- we're just changing the combustible (and incurring a substantial penalty in so doing).
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Science -- Sealed, Delivered.
Watching Americans try and insult Chinese acheivements.
:P
:P
Not as funny as when the states were first to space but still pretty funny
The E.U. jealousy is pretty funny too
When someone owes you a hundred dollars, that's their problem.
When someone owes you a million dollars, that's your problem.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
No, I use my real name.
Survival drives nothing currently.
I suspect that the average Chinese villager is a bit closer to survival mode than you.
Do you actually have any idea what this guys ideas really are? He's not trying to shove anything down anybody's throat. He's doing exactly what you're suggesting, taking new technologies (and some old ones) to make our current way of life more sustainable. Eg: designing factories that have natural light and airflow to reduce cooling and heating costs, as well as to make workers happier. Formulating chemicals specially so the factories that produce them produce environmentally-safe "wastes". There is nothing "utopian" about it. His basic idea is "people should have what they have, and more, and it can be done sustainable with improved technology".
If you're taking exception to the "sustainable village" bit, use your head. Much of China's population lives in villages. Making a better village fits right in with "living as you are now, except better and more sustainably".
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Then who was it who told me to kill my family?
Damnit...
The enemies of Democracy are
Comment removed based on user account deletion
For three quarters of the planet survival is just about the only thing people think about on a daily basis.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
That was me, I was just testing your loyalty to me. Had you gone through with it, a goat would have appeared just before you actually killed them. It would then be your job to kill the goat. I don't know why, but a dead goat really floats my boat. If you'll excuse the rhyme and get my drift.
It'd be simpler and far less damaging to the infrastructure to develop a strain of highly infectious, highly lethal SARS, unleash it on the population, and blame it on the Americans. You get everything you want without a nuclear exchange so devastating that no government could possibly survive the fallout (har har).
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
has yet to point out the real goal here, even though there have been at least 2 Slashdot stories on the topic within the month (and maybe even a dupe or two.)
Putting 2 and 2 together it seems clear that China's goal is to build sustainable colonies on the moon.
It's possible to draw up sanctions in a way that hurts the target politically without hurting other countries' economies too much.
"The EU has already drawn up a hit list of US imports worth about $2.2bn a year which will targeted with retaliatory sanctions.
"The list, which includes Harley Davidson motorcycles, citrus fruit, and textile products, is said to have been calculated so as to hit hardest regions which support President Bush's Republican party. " -- EU slaps $200m tariff on US imports
Also on the flip side, the US has China's balls in a vice as well since China can't afford to stop selling to the US.
In Communist China, building grows you!
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Insightful? INSIGHTFUL??!!! ..... Please tell me that was just someone's mouse slipping and they didn't actually intend for that to get moded insightful.
I could be mistaken on this, but I am almost positive that parent post is not an actual bank robber. I doubt you are gaining any insight into the mind of how a bank robber actually thinks and feels.
I think more than anything a modern city needs to find someway to manage multiple means of travel and keep them seperated. IE have a pedestrian system that does not impinge or become obstructed by vehicle travel.
I would like to see a system that could allow for 4-5 types of right of way. Say
1- Pedestrian. Except for residential there would be no mingling of pedestrian right of way and vehicle right of way. The pedestrian right of way would be non-powered only. Foot/pedal etc... Maybe powered in the class of segway/electric bike/scooter. Say 20/mph limitation.
2- Light vehicle. I mean Golf Cart light. Strict HP/speed max limitation on the vehicle but not on the paths themselves. Use elevated and sunken tram ways as much as possible to avoid intersecting traffic. max of 40mph
3- Regular Vehicle traffic. Highway through traffic, right of way to parking lots etc... Max 100mph. Again avoid intersecting traffic as much as possible.
4- Frieght. Transfer trucks busses etc... access to industrial and commercial areas for delivery or perhaps central unloading zones that utilize lighter vehicles for last mile pallet delivery.
5- Mass Transit. If mass transit were isolated and designed from the begining to have its own right of way then scheduling can be far more consistent and if designed from the get go far more possible to solve the point to point travel inefficiency most systems face.
You would have to pretty much build a city from the ground up to manage something like this as it would require multiplane usage to enable roughly equivalent access to almost all points. You could probably have pedestrian and light vehicle more or less in the same plane and use tunnels and light strcutures for elevating the traffic out of each others way. Then utilize deeper/higher structures for the other. Mostly I would suggest burying the heavy/transit/regular vehicle traffic which would allow you to route the exhaust fumes for management. Require electric or other non-polluting method of power for light vehicles and keep it above ground.
Regulate speed largely via hardware limitations rather than operator limitations and do as much as possible to avoid intersecting traffic. By this I don't mean regulators on the equipment. I mean keep like vehicles in similar zones of travel and keep them headed the same direction. If you have roughly equivalent vehicles together traveling at similar speeds and rarely if ever encountering intersecting traffic then speed isn't much of a concern.
The primary idea would be to make light vehicle traffic the primary means of personal transportation around a city. Cars as we think of them would become more of a long distance/rural solution for personal travel essentially limiting them to primary arteries and as possible off ramps into common areas of commerce (ie the mall/grocery store etc...). The design limitations and requirements of the light vehicles would be the ability to survive most any concievable wreck possible. IE the intersection of technology to protect passangers in Head on/T-bone collisions. This should drasticly reduce the amout of traffic deaths. No more pedestrian/vehicle interaction. NO more massive inequality of mass interactions and largely reduced chances of intersecting traffic creating worst case scenario crashes. Also with keeping the light vehicles cheap and that much safer would reduce insurance and maintenece costs.
Freight keeps the craziest mix of vehicle classes apart. No more massive 18 wheelers and honda civics mixing it up. Also should allow again for tighter schedules and create less congestion. Also having them on specific roadways would mean not having to over engineer general right of ways to handle their level of stress. Mass Transist systems almost HAVE to have their own right of way else they are useless (see most buss systems in any congested metropolis)
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
...both by Hundertwasser and by South American engineers. It's good to see scaling-up attempts.
t m
There was this Austrian chap (he's dead you see) who called himself Friedensreich Hundertwasser (his real name was Friedrich Stowasser) who had all sorts of wonderfully wonky ideas about how to design living spaces in synergy with nature.
An absolute lack of square angles is definitely a trademark of his, along with an abundance of colours. There are a number of exhibits and presentations about the man and his works -- here is the home page of the official museum in Vienna, which is definitely worth a visit.
http://www1.kunsthauswien.com/english/mainindex.h
As you can see, Hunderwassers ideas were revolutionary (perhaps too much so), but it has set a trail for other people to follow.
"Other people" recently turned out to be architect Shah Jaafar and professor Kamaruzzaman Sopian of the Advanced Engineering Centre at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, who have shown (sorry, no link available) that it is indeed possible to make housing that gets by exclusively on solar power and hydrogen, both of which are natural and infinitely renewable resources (okay, maybe not infinitely, but I'm sure you'll agree it's close enough). This is interesting reading, and sheds a positive light on the future. Maybe there's a way around the current energy- and pollution-related problems of our world after all?
"Good news, everyone!"
This is one point that I utterly disagree on. When the chinese prime minister was here, during the Clinton years, and was asked about human rights violations in China, you know what his answer was? He said, yes, freedom and liberty are important, but he believes, to a chinese person, even before he gets his full freedom, he'd rather have an education. That sentence struck me very much, at the core of my belief system, which was freedom above all. But he's right - after all, what is freedom good for without wisdom, what is freedom good for if you don't know what to do with it? I personally witnessed the fall of communism in the eastern block countries, and the fingerpointing, blaming and lynching of each other that starts whenever people free suddenly "free" and run rampant without self control, because there is no longer a secret service that's watching and comes takes you away. Remember the french revolution and guillotines? A temporary fix could be freedom+religion, fear of God, God is watching instead of the secret service, but the Chinese don't have Gods. Yet their culture is the most outspoken preacher of self control - wax on, wax off - remember? Wouldn't inner self control be a much more dignified way to be a human being, than an external self control, such as secret service or God?
Don't write off the Chinese so easily - they somehow put a stop to the explosive population growth, in a culture that values huge families. As far as sustainability goes, they hold the record - they have maintained a continuous existence for almost longer than any other culture - though heavily violent at first, the philosophies of Confucius and Lao Tzu from millenia ago, that still dominate today, sound very nonviolent and sustainable, even if not perfect - e.g. father as an absolute "tyrant." The Chinese were also not perfect in the sense that they too had an emperor until very recently, corruption, etc., but still, it's worth paying attention to what they are saying. They are not convinced the Taiwanese system that we pump so full of cash and resources to showcase it to them as bait, will lead to good. After all, they know what kind of opium-plague the free market can lead to, that scar in their memory is still very recent. When I see internet censoring stories about them, I'm not fully convinced that it's done simply out of a need to maintain corrupt power, or to keep China from succumbing to the inflow of miseducation and sex-opium-n-rocknroll that you get from the liberated, freemarket, human-rights promoting Clearchannel-RIAA western media.
Actually for such a powerful empire back then they were comparitively quite peaceful next to the Bristish Empire, France, Japan, Germany and todays USA.
Manchuria - invaded China and forced chinese people to bound their feet and shave their foreheads.
Tibet - allied with Manchuria to invade China.
Vietnam - though they ousted out the Chinese, they were then invaded or the nice term 'colonised' by the French. then had the americans interfere in their civil war resulting in more deaths. Agent Orange? Unexploded land mines left behind?
In 1421 China was sailed across the globe. Who did they conquer? then look at what the British, French and Spanish did when they finally learnt the art of sea faring from the Chinese.
Chinese used gun powder for fireworks. Europeans when they learnt the formula used it for...
You can call Chinas history brutal but COMPARITIVELY they HAVE been quite peaceful.
I don't know how the hell you got modded up but you obviously don't know what you are talking about. China has more than a few ICMBs that are more than capable of reaching the US and further. And if ICMBs make them a threat, what does that say of the US which has had ICMBs for decades?
The reason China's economy is growing really fast is because they stopped centrally planning it. Yes they do have a lot of state sponsored works but the real dynamo of China's economy is that a lot of a generals in the Chinese army took their military contract funds and opened up factories to produce goods bound for America. Chinese banks now underwrite this production dramatically, so that, anyone in China can get a loan to start a factory if they can convince the bank they have a buyer in America for the goods that it produces.
This is my sig.
No, I'm pissed off because the USPTO keeps giving out stupid patents.
It's not about "free stuff". I'm all for patents when they are applied to legitimate inventions. A patent on being able to tell a customer that they've ordered something when they're on a "Product Details" page is just plain ludicrous -- the idea is so obscenely obvious the application should have been laughed out of the USPTO, not granted.
We do have treated water, but nobody drinks it right off the tap (when I lived in Madrid, Spaniards looked funny to me because I bought bottled water -- they would say "our treated water is great, drink it right off the tap!!" -- but I digress.)
We don't really *trust* the water company, so many people have filters at their home. I, personally, live in a place where there is a slight contamination with iron oxide dust (there is an iron mine few km away and my building is on the top of a hill, the city reservoir that serves us is near, too), so we buy bottled water, not because of health issues (there is none), but because of the taste, and filters do no good about it.
Only people who have wells boil the water or otherwise treat it -- normally with chlorine small pills, that are cheap and relatively safe (you drop a pill per liter of water, wait one hour, and it's ready to drink).
When my brother-in-law comes from Germany, he drinks the (filtered) water, without any ill effects whatsoever, which IMHO indicates our water treatment is passable.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
We're not talking about "perpetually sustainable" cities that will last until the end of time. Yes, there will be natural disasters - glaciers will appear at some point and wipe out a lot of the earth's surface. But in the short (human-lifespan) term, there's no reason to think we can't design sustainable cities that can survive all of the short-term disasters that will be thrown at us.
And if we ever want to get off this rock, we're going to have to design the technology anyway. You honestly don't believe a moon-base is possible, regardless of advances in technology?
Last post!
FYI: This phrase is a quote widely attributed to Saudi Oil Minister Sheik Zaki Yamani although in a number of interviews McDonut seems to have appropriated it as his own.
It simply amazes me when Americans talk of gas (petrol) being expensive at $2.20. You guys are practically getting the stuff for free. Try comparing your price with the UK ($7.00 a gallon, pretty much anywhere in Europe
We in the US are equally amazed that you in Europe are willing to pay 80% fuel taxes to your rapacious socialist governments.
an ill wind that blows no good
"Yet their culture is the most outspoken preacher of self control - wax on, wax off - remember?"
Please don't make cultural judgements made from low budget 80's teen movies, especially when you can't tell the difference between China and Japan.
Let's hope this expert recommends every possible measure of heavy handed socialist nonsense. We need their economy crushed so as to be noncompetitive.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Actually, in the US (or any other country in which society is not as rigidly ordered as in China), IP laws are pretty much the only way in which such a thing could happen. What is the incentive for a company to get into "sustainable" develoment which, almost by definition, implies a decrease in net throughput of material goods ? The only incentive can be based on IP. First, so that companies can actually make money on something else than industrial goods (IP is usally environment-friendly, at least more so than a car or a fridge). Second, so that companies have an incentive in inventing new sustainable devices which otherwise would probably not be economically viable.
Of course that's the theory. In practice, between the lawyer culture prevalent in America and the obvious difficulty in convincing Joe Sixpack of trading his SUV against a more "sustainable" mode of transport, I doubt much will happen on this front in here.
Thomas-
The stone age was overtaken by the bronze age because of 1) a technological discovery, the ability to melt and alloy metal to create bronze, 2) specialization of labor allowed metalsmiths to become good at bronze working (instead of working on the farm all the time) and 3) expansion of trade routes allowed metals to flow from where they were found to where they were needed.
The broze age did not occur because some dictator saw to it. It just happened because of the free market and free trade...
As others have said, trade and globalization issues will place some sort of check and balance on the whole IP issue. My guess, which is as good as any other marginally-informed guess, is that all sides will choose their IP battles carefully. So in a little more detail:
First off, trying to write broad IP claims for a sustainable city sounds ludicrous to me. There are so many elements to a sustainable city, and there has been so much academic publication on the concept for so many years that I doubt that there's much left. There is probably room for broad claims on some specific technologies, and numerous narrow claims, but I doubt that anyone can sew this one up tight, any more.
Second, I doubt any other nations are going to get too uppity about things China does for domestic consumption that a) aren't exportable and b) don't compete with importable products.
There will be IP battles, but they will be carefully chosen. IMHO there's no way other nations will try and block China from building sustainable cities. We'll look to them as a fruitful market for our movies, music, etc.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Whenever I hear about "sustainable development" talk in developing countries, I think of Robert Mugabe's recent Operation Murambatsvina ("clean up trash") which has evicted at least 300,000 people from their homes in Zimbabwe cities in because they were "slums."
Of course, the real reason for this "urban renewal" is to move opponents to the ruling ZANU PF out of the cities.
barbecued by a no longer existant ozone layer
_ Substances_that_Deplete_the_Ozone_Layer
foolish example.
The ozone layer was saved only because of "one group of people (scientists and politicians) forcing their opinions down the throats of the rest of the population (that's you), that population before forced to live under and according to the designing and ruling group's theories (also called science)."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol_on
The Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer was signed by 183 nations. No amount of arogant libertarian-utopian whining will change the fact that YOU are not allowed to pump CFCs into the atmosphere even if you really wanted to.
See, here in the real world we think that SOME rules need to aply to everyone.
Fight Frist Psoting!
Browse Slashdot with 'Newest First'!
I don't recall that the Chinese said that every family should have a car... in fact, I think a country with 1.3 Billion people can figure that the crap really hit the fan when every family have a car. I thought it was Hitler who came with that idea, IIRC; hence Volkswagen - nothing against the company, I'm just pointing out how the name came about.
The Chinese are getting more cars because the people in the coastal region can afford it, often at the expense of other Chinese in the not-so-coastal region, where agriculture remains as the source of income. Also many of the businessmen are crooked, often selling food and consumable with industrial chemicals, or illegally dumping the industrial waste into the rivers, where there just might be people downstream who drinks the river water.
Sure, just hearing them talk about it means very little, but if you've been anywhere near China, especially the high-growth area, you know the pollution is causing a heck of a problem, and I am not surprised at all that they just might be serious about it.
Even that budget 80's teen movie portrays a chinese elder, in his wisdom, teaching a teen how to be a man. That is the most important step in any kind of sustainability, teaching the next generation, and caring about them, instead of caring only about yourself and what party you will go to this weekend when it's finally Friday-Friday-Friday, and how you'll spend your check-into-cash-payday-advance money you just got. Stick your head in the sand, like just-another-manic-mondays never come.
Missed the second part, mea culpa, I forgot he was a japanese person, instead of chinese. I don't think that's such a core issue, because the two cultures are very close to each other. You ask any japanese or chinese, and they won't care that much who he was, as opposed to what he was preaching. Does it matter if a black belt is an ethiopian, or a classical music flute player is a japanese?
China could essentially destroy the US without damaging a single building, or directly killing a single person. Consider China exploding their entire nuclear arsenal at strategic points, high in the atmosphere above the US - an EMP attack. The results? No buildings destroyed but:
- no more computers
- no transport (cars, trains, aircraft would all stop working)
- no agriculture (see no transport - all that high tech farm machinery would be borked)
- no food distribution (see no transport)
- no factories
- no commerce
- no electricity
The only machines that would still work would be EMP hardened military equipment (not enough to go around) and old mechanically injected diesel engines (again not enough to go around, and besides, the oil refineries and oil distribution system would have been fucked by the EMP).
but 270 million mouths to feed. The US would fall into anarchy within days, followed by a famine of enormous scale (and that would go for Canada and Mexico as collateral damage).
It would be decades before North America would be able to recover.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Had you gone through with it
Um... Oops.
It would then be your job to kill the goat.
That's what I was supposed to do with the goat? Oops again.
The enemies of Democracy are
Come on... We're talking about the workers' paradise that's going to give the eeeevil and hegemonious United States its comeuppance in the new millenium. Have faith, my brother. Better days are ahead!
This just in:
Dear Patriotic Comrade,
We are pleased to announce that as of 2015, you may no longer be among the hundreds of millions of emaciated subsistence farmers in the glorious People's Republic of China under the wise leadership of the Communist party.
Should you be one of the lucky few whose shack is not submerged under the hydroelectric power project coming soon to a valley near you, you will be the proud citizen of a shiny new Sustainable Hydro-powered Industrial Town with a Holistically-Oriented Living Environment (SHITHOLE).
In your glorious new SHITHOLE, you will live a life of self-sustainable ease. You will produce various low-quality products in the local factory, grow your own crops on the collective farm, cook with animal dung, weave your own fabric, build your shelters, travel hundreds of miles for basic medical care, and if you're one of the lucky first 1000 residents you will receive a brand spanking new donkey* courtesy of MSN China. MSN China--they put the party back in Communist Party.
Welcome to the 21st century, Comrade!
Sincerely,
Proud Bureaucrat
* free donkey offer not valid in Anhui, Fujian, Gansu, Guangdong, Guizhou, Hainan, Hebei, Heilongjiang, Henan, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Jilin, Liaoning, Qinghai, Shaanxi, Shandong, Shanxi, Sichuan, Yunan or Zhejiang provinces.
3000+ comments meta-modded. 0 mod points awarded.
Lesson for other meta-suckers: Don't believe the hype!
results of such an attack are unknown, consider all the electronics under metal or conductive roofs, inside metal vehicles, underground, and inside shielded conductors. Condsider attenuation points such as power transformers in the power grid. One thing is the emp from a "normal" weapon, energy spread to 30KHz. Another would be from weapons *designed* to make emp, in microwave region. They would cripple us to unknown extent but get certain total destruction in return. Not a good plan for history's longest practicing empire-builders.
He said, yes, freedom and liberty are important, but he believes, to a chinese person, even before he gets his full freedom, he'd rather have an education.
Sure and that is why we don't give full legal freedom to children. But at some point children must grow up and take on responsibility for their own lives and choices. That is what freedom is about.
You, communism and many western politicians present us with a false choice, between freedom and other things.
But freedom as it concerns a government is seperate from material things provided to people, but rather it is the concept that people have natural rights that the government will not take away. Freedom is that people are not arbitrarily interfered with by the government when they communicate with one another. Freedom is that people are not forced to perform work for others or by the government. Freedom is that people are not prevented by the government from moving or relocating from one place to another nor are they forced to do so. Freedom is that people be secure in their person and property and not be forced by the government to do anything to their bodies or give up their possessions.
Freedom is not about what a government can do for people, but what the government can't do to people.
It sounds like the concept would have a dual application in space exploration, wouldn't it?
Sustainable City would in essence be a closed environment/eco-system. May hap the Chinese are really looking to get ahead in terms of colonizing somewhere besides our third rock from the sun...
"Creativity is allowing ones self to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep" - Scott Adams
Sorry, but I've eaten steak, and I've eaten soy based faux steak.
I was sworn to that I would not be able to tell the difference. I should've paid attention to who it was that was telling me that: vegetarians and vegans who'd never eaten steak!
It was crap. Foul. Not steak like at all. Didn't smell like steak. Didn't taste like steak.
Immediatley after the dinner party was over I went to the all night grocer and bought a pound or three of steak, went home, and had a real steak. Much, much better!
interstellar donkey, you may have awesome insights into the problem at hand, but after reading the above statment, I stopped reading. Other than the last sentence, since I can see that here while I'm commenting. And which I will comment upon.
"Let's start building our cities with non-car owners in mind".
Where are we building new cities? We are building new towns or villages, perhaps, but cities are not being built from the ground up, at least not in my neck of the woods. The cities around here are expanding, but they aren't being built anew.
Let's say we do build all new residential areas with pedistrian only walkways. Who'd pick up the trash/recycling? No powered vehicles allowed, remember. How would you get that grand piano to your house? Or that large, stylish sofa? Or pool table? Or the bandsaw that weighs 400 pounds, like is in my garage/workshop? (along with an even heavier milling machine, lathe, two more bandsaws, a freaking heavy as crap spot welder (made in the 30s!), sheet metal brake, welders, and a table saw that weigh at least as much, most weigh more)
Anyway, to sum up. Soy based steak substitute sucks, and we aren't building new cities, so your argument is silly, except in developing countires that might be building new cities.
-gandalf23@work
I could ride my bicycle, but due to crossing two highways, and having to stay on back roads, it would take about 45 minuts to get there. Cost was free-ish, as I already had the bike.
Or I could drive my car. About a 7 minute drive. Cost, even on it's worst day my Caprice got 15mpg, so at most, given current gas prices or $2.25 a gallon, was about $0.90 round trip.
Now I live about 11 miles from the office and there is no way to get there via bus that takes less than 1.5 hours. Versus 20 minutes of driving. Cost is, again using 15mpg and $2.25/gallon, $1.65 each way, or $3.30 round trip. I'm not sure what the bus would cost as I've never ridden it from here, just looked at what the route would be.
For me, public transportation cost the same, or more than driving myself. Plus it takes way more time. And, if I'm on the bus, then if I see someone trowing out a perfectly good PC, or desk, or file cabinet, or 1930s spot welder!, I can't stop and throw it in the bus. But I can stop and load it (except for the spot welder, had to get friends and trailer for that) into my truck. :)
-gandalf23@work
Ah! The American way!
That's a possibility, provided that the US don't nuke those cities building locations. And that a nuclear war doesn't destroy all life on earth first (think: radiation poisoning). By the way, people have always been reluctant to push the Button and kill everyone.
A major problem with representative democracy is that the average politician is generally unwilling to do work that has an effect more than four years into the future. Eight at the outside. Long-term goals tend not to exist.
Me (Blog)
Thanks to both of you for the laughs :).
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
And where would be build houses and businesses?
+++
http://www.drudgereport.com for the truth.
The original topic here was sustainability, and the Chinese gov't being out to dumb their own people down to be able to tell at all what the concept means. I answered those things - the Chinese, unlike the US newstainment media-culture, are not out to dumb themselves down. And as far as sustainability goes, they have a pretty good record, even if they are dealing with the biggest sustainability problem on the planet - too many people. They are dealing with it.
Yes, I agree freedom is extremely important, but there is that other side to it too, that you heard. To every dogma, to every principle, whenever you hear the other side with some truth to it, it's worth considering and soaking up the thoughts. You could say what's an education worth if you're not allowed to be free even after you've got your education - and you'd be right. To every story there are two sides, ying-yang.
For one, how can you be free, when the government tells you you can't have more than one kid? What kind of freedom is that? Yet, what would be the sustainability cost of such freedom, in China with 1.3 billion mouths to feed?
"Freedom is that people be secure in their person and property and not be forced by the government to do anything to their bodies or give up their possessions. Freedom is not about what a government can do for people, but what the government can't do to people."
Yeah, right, give me a break - as opposed to China, the US doesn't have eminent domain, - the US government respects your property. Yeah, eminent domain is not the reason why the only sane supreme court judge threw in the towel, and now all you have left is spineless sheep that never stick up a pole and not budge from their position, and evaluate things for themselves, but instead get herded whichever way the wind blows from the White House. The original intent of the Founding Fathers was of a gov't with division of power, between the President, Court System, and Congress, neither of the 3 having full authority over the other, and having to stare each other down and come to deadlocks if that's what it takes. Where is that balance these days?
Also the secret service can't just pull up to your house without a warrant, like it can in China, and take you away, on suspicion that you could be a terrorist, or whatever buzzword they use in China.
What's really different anymore in the US from a dictatorship, such as China has. At least, if you must have dictators, have ones that say "a person would rather have an education" than ones that say "don't double-tax dividends."
Yeah, right, give me a break - as opposed to China, the US doesn't have eminent domain, - the US government respects your property.
I never made the comparison. I never said that the US was any better than China regarding government respect for people's freedoms. Freedom is an absolute good relative only to itself. Sure we can go through and compare how each government violates freedom of its citizens for its own corrupt convenience, that isn't the point.
It is not a choice between freedom and educating children. It is not a choice between freedom and establishing and maintaining rights of way and bulding bridges. It is not a choice between freedom and security. These are all false choices. It is a false yin and yang. The chinese leadership is merely playing politics as any other western poltician would. Rather than looking at all the government takes away, they would rather show you what it gives.
It is an argument that you can always make, but it is a false argument. Look at how many good things the Roman's gave those they conquered, the roads the bridges, the systems of laws, many material things. The Eurpoean colonial powers could say the same. The USA tries to say the same about Iraq now. Look at how many governments conquer their own people everyday. Look at Turkmenistan and know how power corrupts. There have always been and will always be corruption, but to say that a government faces a choice between providing education or any other service and providing freedom is false. Governments don't provide freedom, they can only take it away.
You make very good points. Freedom is an absolute good relative only to itself. Still, there is a need for government, a need for limiting freedoms, which is what 'to govern' means. If nothing else, for simple sustainability reasons because we live in the real world. Not being allowed to have more than 1 child? What kind of freedom is that?
Still, as you point out, everyone has their right for inner, personal freedom, to be the way they want to be, especially when it doesn't affect others too much. As an example, think of the pygmies and the bushmans from the kalahari desert getting deported into urban gettoes, cuz we know what's better for them. We 'modernize' them. I too say if they wanna live in the desert, let them live in the desert. That's where their heart belongs. There is nothing more heart wrenching, then an old bushman, sitting behind chicken wire in the ghetto, looking out toward the desert and longing to be there, singing his old songs and crying. Are you gonna argue to the bushmans, that look, you'll have central heating and air conditioning, and all the water you can dream of, come move into the city, it's better for you? And him saying no, I want to teach my grandchildren how to find and dig up a hibernating frog from the sand, and be able to drink, nasty water, but drink in the tradition my great grandfathers did.
There is a fine subtle tone in the semantics of the chinese prime minister that you can pick up - "he believes a chinese person would like an education first." He didn't say "needs one," or "should have one," but, "would like one." Also he didn't say "he knows," but "he believes," meaning it's a given he could be dead wrong. Just like the bushman "would like to" stay the way he is and teach his grandkids, so you let him, but in case he asks to learn calculus and classical music, doesn't he have the right to? Culture is a very important thing, but even above a persons own culture, comes his own inner freedom, first, his own right to be the way he wants to be, as long as it doesn't affect others too much. Even the Amish recognize this part.
It's always a balance, ying-yang, personal freedom vs. affecting others with your freedom. For instance, I heard dads saying "I don't want teachers in school teaching my kids how to be gay, I'd prefer having my own grandkids instead." Now all people who happen to be gay, we let them, because it doesn't affect us that much, compared to what an important, core issue to their inner freedom being gay is, but to say that it doesn't affect us at all, that would be a bit of overstatement.
Yes, politicians love to present us with false choices, but in principle, in everything, in every action, there is still a choice. Ying-yang is never false, because there are always at least two sides to every story. Every story. Knowing and fully absorbing both sides is the only way to retain balance. Whenever you hear a bit of another side to a truth that you've held practically to a dogma status, you should be very happy to be able to listen, and soak it up, but that doesn't mean you abandoned your previous stance. It doesn't mean "either one or the other," but more like a little bit of both, even when you "make choices."
You make good choices by being fully aware of the other side, and being careful, that while you live with your polarized, "agrressive" choice that you just took, you keep the other side in mind and never forget about it, and be ready to pull back, and swing back to the other side, at a moment's notice, when you've overswung too much to this side. Oscillate near the balance point. You can't live life by doing nothing ever, and whenever you do something, you're automatically swinging to one side of some story.
Sometimes life requires that you swing quite a bit to "the other side," trying to balance a tide that's way over your means, and you're reduced to a status of "bashing your head against some wall." That's what the current resigning supreme court judge did, threw in the towel, protest. Bashed her head against a
Bashing heads against walls is what Gandhi and his followers did, what Rosa Parks did, what Nelson Mandela did, and what you should do too when tempted to say "I welcome our new insect overlords." It does not mean giving up hope, but it means willing to sacrifice yourself. Sometimes it doesn't work out, like for the jews at Masada, or for the chinese students at Tien An Men square, but it's still the right way to be, because what's life worth without freedom? Only a person that fights for his principles is truly alive, said somebody once. To counter that and lighten up a bit, somebody else said "Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others."
It's not so important how many dollars it costs to produce ethanol capable of delivering one unit of energy. It's how many energy units it takes. Chemical processes only benefit so much from economy of scale. Currently ethanol takes more energy to produce than it can yield, and there's no reason to believe that's going to change much in the foreseeable future.
-- Old Man Kensey
Resources that we throw away don't just disappear. They're in the landfills and garbage dumps. One day somebody is going to develop a process to take old garbage, separate out valuable compounds, and reuse them. Probably that person will then find out it's not economically feasible for them to do it, due to someone else having started by buying the resource exploitation rights already from the various state and municipal solid-waste authorities, who will then buy the latecomer's R&D work and start the operation going.
It's shale oil all over again. Right now it's not practical to [extract shale oil|refine garbage]. But as the scarcity increases and the price climbs, it becomes more and more economical to develop processes to do these things that were formerly "too expensive".
-- Old Man Kensey
There is a difference between idiots who can't think further than next week, and people who exercise what is termed "enlightened self-interest" and thus are aware of long-term benefits to actions that seem painful in the short term. For an example of the idiots, look at people with negative-amortization mortgages, or Wall Street analysts who reward companies for treating their employees like replaceable factory machines (Wal-Mart) in ignorance of the real financial benefits that come from treating your employees well (such as, say, Costco, which is poised to eat Wal-Mart's lunch if the WMT execs don't watch out).
The trouble is, you can't have enlightened self-interest if you don't allow people to act on their own behalf. The key is allowing people to act to their own benefit without allowing them to act to the detriment of others.
I see a lot of self-described libertarians running around talking about how environmental regulation is anticapitalist and this and that. To them I say, who gave you the right to smoke up the air (and foul the water) that I breathe (and drink)? If you want to reduce the value of the air or water to everyone else in the world, you better compensate them for it before you do. And I don't mean "well, we make products that they can use..." I mean a choice that they make of their own free will. I mean giving them an option to say "No, I'd rather not breathe tainted air, thanks." If you want the right to be protected from others, you have to give others the right to be protected from you as well. Be glad that instead of having to answer individually to everyone in the dispersal radius of your industrial pollutants, you get away with just dealing with the government from time to time. A true libertarian regime would be much worse for you.
Enlightened self-interest can't exist if you attempt to protect others from themselves, only if you're protecting them from unconsenting harm by others and letting them dispose of themselves how they will.
-- Old Man Kensey