Slashdot Mirror
Big Tobacco Funded Anti-Global Warming Messages
An anonymous reader writes, "The UK Guardian is running an excerpt from the new book "Heat" by George Monbiot (to be published later this month) spelling out the network of funding opposing global action against global warming — specifically, limits on human carbon dioxide generation. The excerpt outlines a web of fake citizens' groups and bogus (but authoritative sounding) research institutes designed to convince laypeople that human causation of global warming is scientifically controversial. Not surprisingly, the article notes funding by ExxonMobil. More interesting is the role played big tobacco, tying their attack on the health risks of second-hand smoke to global warming skepticism." From the article: "What I have discovered while researching this issue is that the corporate funding of lobby groups denying that man-made climate change is taking place was initiated not by Exxon, or by any other firm directly involved in the fossil fuel industry. It was started by the tobacco company Philip Morris."
Smoke em if you got em?
Just a reminder...
That ain't liver; that's beef kidney!
The tobacco companies are seeing that their basic agenda and their best interests are very similar to the oil companies. Tobacco companies have people hooked on to a big health hazard while big oil compaines do this using the black goo they extract. Between them, it does not matter who is supporting what.
This is not to claim that all the science these groups champion is bogus. On the whole, they use selection, not invention. They will find one contradictory study - such as the discovery of tropospheric cooling, which, in a garbled form, has been used by Peter Hitchens in the Mail on Sunday - and promote it relentlessly.
/. will flame me for this, but those promoting Global Warming do the exact same. They'll find reports / studies to their advantage and promote them like crazy. Example: They'll only refer to the cities / countries showing warming trends, and ignore those that are actually showing cooling trends. Both sides do it.
I know
CEI's got some great anti-global warming stuff. I've seen claims that they're funded by Exxon. On the flip-side, Penn and Teller's have a CEI 'expert' on, in an episode of their show, "Penn and Teller's Bullshit!" -- one would hope that P&T would avoid using oil industry shills to support the points they make on their show.
So what's the deal with CEI? Are they reputable?
http://www.cei.org/
All this from a company that paid for studies that declared smoking couldn't be linked to causing cancer.
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
Just to sell tabacco.
For the free market to operate "correctly" (allocating money/resources to entities that generate value) its members must have access to good information about products -- their benefits and their costs. In the idealized theory, the market must have perfect information about products.
When the sources of information are so frequently corrupted by established power centers, how is there any home that efficient value-allocation will occur?
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Poopenmeyer: Garbage ball, huh? That sounds serious.
Farnsworth: Very serious, Mayor Poopenmeyer.
Poopenmeyer: I gotta be sure this isn't another scientific fraud like global warming or second-hand smoke. [He presses the intercom.] Send in my science advisor.
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
Given the summary, shouldn't the title be "Big Tobacco Funded Anti-Anti-Global Warming Messages"?
www.timcoleman.com is a total waste of your time. Never go there.
That means they "care" about "us"!
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
OK, I smoke. Probably about 10 roll-ups a day. But I also don't drive a car, I bike everywhere.
Man, do I feel guilty for causing all that global warming through smoking! (I have no qualms in believing smoke passive or otherwise is detrimental to health though)
Breaking news from the 1700's: those groups denying scientific evidence that fire is caused by phlogiston are related to pro-"oxygen" groups. "Oxygen" is a crackpot theory that goes against the scientific consensus: everybody knows that fire comes from the amount of phlogiston in the inflammable substance.
Seriously though, I don't want to miss out on interesting news. I've never blacklisted an editor here -- not michael, not even JonKatz. But this "kdawson" person is absolutely horrible. Whenever I see a story obviously chosen for its flamebait potential, it's always from kdawson. Might be time to do it.
For those interested, go to "preferences", "homepage", and uncheck "kdawson" from the editor list. You'll be happy you did.
When the article in Rolling Stone written by RFK Jr was posted, the Slashbot mantra was: "What difference does it make what the source is? Consider the facts presented!"
Right back at'cha.
. . . they're employing their core competency to leverage creation of a favorable issue environment.
Put another way, what they're doing is encouraging the creation of a population of irate soreheads programmed to doubt anything on command.
I mean, dang, there are a lot of folks out there who think Penn Jillette and Micheal Crichton are authorities on global warming and second hand smoke.
What's surprising at this point isn't that Big Oil sponsors misleading propaganda to sway public opinion and protect their interests, it's that so many people continue to ignore the facts and accuse those of us who talk about these kinds of tactics as Tin Foil Hat Wearing Lefty Scare Mongerers (or insert your favorite slur here).
It's not just this issue, it's a whole host of issues including the 2000 & 2004 elections, the (non) connection of Iraq to Al-Qaeda and others. When will we all wake up?
(off to do penance for straying off the immediate topic)
Hello idealist. Welcome back to the Real World.
The people who want to blame Exxon for Hurricane Katrina are obviously picking and choosing. As I understand it, though, scientists have a reliable measurement -- global mean surface temperature -- which shows a steady rise and which is not contradicted by local cooling. I like that scene in the Crichton book when a guy points to a cooling trend at a single weatherstation and says "there's your global warming".
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
What's the motivation behind Philip Morris trying to debunk global warming?
the problem is, is that the weather, or the enviroment is highly complex system of which we don't fully understand or even know what we need to know ot model it properly. there is no way you can predict the weather 20 years out when we only have a 40% chance of getting it right 3 days out. To say that we can have some sort of definitive answer anytime within our lifetime is absurd, there are too many variables we haven't even begun to account for.
-dave
http://millionnumbers.com/ - own the number of your dreams
Someone needs to counter the one-sided biased propaganda coming out of Big Academia, funded by Big Government, paid for by my taxes. Props to Big Tobacco for stepping up to the plate.
In the idealized theory, the market must have perfect information about products.
I think you mean to say that in an ideal world, the market *participants* have perfect information. Participants in markets don't need to have perfect information for markets to be preferable to other methods of distribution. Communism (for example) doesn't become superior because you have to call around town to find the best price, and you decide to stop searching before you've called them all, in other words.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
After reading that a couple of years back, I would definately be interested in checking out his latest work.
She's built like a steak house, but she handles like a bistro....
1) Given that the "secondhand-smoke" hysteria genuinely was shoddy pseudoscience as a pretext to legislate lifestyle, how useful is it to tie global warming to it? Or am I supposed to read about Big Tobacco, think "Ohmigod, it's *big*!" and fall under my desk in terror?
2) So does Big Oil (Aaaugghhh! Under the desk!!!) get some sort of apology now that it turns out that these groups were actually some sort of bizarre tobacco PR scheme?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
The jury is still out on the CO2 angle and proselytizing to the slashdot CO2 choir
....
wont help.
Who btw is funding the CO2 crowd.... why of course the business interests that are built
squarely on the CO2 business plan. The shortest way to locate these is simply to follow
the Euros from the CO2-Professors wallet back to the eurosocialist elite coffers.
Oh well... slashdot and responsible journalism
Yes, the art of deception. The doctrine of "perception is greater than truth" is followed by people and organizations of low moral standards. One would think that in the age of instant information one could ferret out these amoral jerks but it's not easily done.
A couple of enabling factors are present that contributes to the problem.
1. In general people are lazy, complacent sheep who hear what they want to hear and don't take the trouble of getting involved until a problem directly impacts their lives. When that happens it is usually too late.
2. There is such a volume of information and disinformation that it all blends into a kind of white noise that can make shifting the truth difficult for the few who really want to get at the truth. And if they do get at the truth problem one and two kicks in. Few will listen and their warnings just become part of the white noise.
I'm just as guilty as most. It's just easier for me to sit back and watch seeds of corruption grow and bear fruit. Oh, I add to the white noise with my complaints but there are so many issues and no one really listens anyway. The shame is that the fruit of corruption will eventually be the end of mankind or maybe even all life on Earth.
Heh, intelligent animals... Mother nature's greatest mistake!
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
designed to convince laypeople that human causation of global warming is scientifically controversial
Well, could it be that they're trying to convince people because it IS controversial?
I KNOW people want to believe this. That's fine. It's a belief, great. So is Catholicism. And, like Catholicism, that doesn't mean it's fact. Global warming, right now is a theory with lots of supporting evidence, but no proof. If it had proof, it wouldn't be a theory.
Additionally, the whole global warming thing is all over the map. We're going to cook. We're going to dive into an ice age. The seas are going to heat up. The seas are going to cool off. About the only thing that the various claimants agree on is "Global Warming Is A Bad Thing".
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
you had me at #!
http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/2005/08/george _monbiot.html
Libertarianism is unworkable and deeply flawed. It, like Communism, relies on something that does not exist: the perfect human being. In order for Libertariansim to work all people must work towards their own elightened self interest. The problem is that's not how humans work. We (and I'm speaking in terms of populations more than particular people) are selfish, needy, dishonest and mean.
Libtertarianism also relies on corporations acting in their own best, long-term self interest. We've all see that modern corporations don't look any further down the road than their next quaterly statement and in every place where there is not sufficient regulations they abuse the system and their employees to the limits of human endurance. That chemical spill in India was the result of an American chemical company locating a plant in a country with lax environmental and safety laws and operating their plant at those minimum specs in order to save money.
To blindly trust businesses is folly at best and suicide at worst. The only time businesses care about you is when you spend your money on their products and services. Never forget that.
I grew up in a Libertarian household. None of them remain Libertarians.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
No doubt Big Tobacco anticipates that, following the failure of their foes' specious "secondhand smoke causes cancer" argument, the next salvo will be "secondhand smoke causes global warming".
Sure, you laugh now...
A million tiny smoke stacks can't be wrong.
--
This is a joke. I am joking. You have been joked with.
In Ethiopia, male life expectancy is 42.88 years. George was born in 1963. Maybe that's why the cheery peasants in the fields are cracking up with laughter: they know that even if he moves in tomorrow, they'll only have to endure his column in The Gamo Gofa Times-Herald for another year or two.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
(but then, I get all my news from Fox.)
While I enjoy the comedy magic antics of Penn and Teller, I'm not sure that I could take anyone citing them as a source on a science-related topic seriously.
Their show is shocking and funny... because it's designed to be shocking and funny. That's how their interview candidates are selected. Without straw men, punching bags, and contrarian positions it would sort of end up like an episode of nova.
--- Little Atomo - The Amazing Thinking Robot from Atomocom! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIP9KisHi4k
Climate change is not about local weather prediction.
m
'In common parlance the notions "weather" and "climate" are loosely defined1. The "weather", as we experience it, is the fluctuating state of the atmosphere around us, characterised by the temperature, wind, precipitation, clouds and other weather elements. This weather is the result of rapidly developing and decaying weather systems such as mid-latitude low and high pressure systems with their associated frontal zones, showers and tropical cyclones. Weather has only limited predictability. Mesoscale convective systems are predictable over a period of hours only; synoptic scale cyclones may be predictable over a period of several days to a week. Beyond a week or two individual weather systems are unpredictable. "Climate" refers to the average weather in terms of the mean and its variability over a certain time-span and a certain area. Classical climatology provides a classification and description of the various climate regimes found on Earth. Climate varies from place to place, depending on latitude, distance to the sea, vegetation, presence or absence of mountains or other geographical factors. Climate varies also in time; from season to season, year to year, decade to decade or on much longer time-scales, such as the Ice Ages. Statistically significant variations of the mean state of the climate or of its variability, typically persisting for decades or longer, are referred to as "climate change".'
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/index.ht
you had me at #!
Your confusing weather and the climate.
Weather says "40% chance of rain tonight".
Climate says "If you traveling to North Dakoda in November, better take a heavy coat".
"The last thing I want to do is deal with a bunch of people who want something."
Major Major
Oh well, guess I'll have to dismantle my bio-diesel car that runs on cigarette butts.
But at least all the smokers will stop following my car around town.
Which appears to be a lot of you, not that I'm really blaming anyone...
The reason why Big Tobacco has an interest in global warming is not because global warming might be linked to cigarettes. (Considering how difficult it is for the environmentalists to prove that cars cause global warming, it would be nigh impossible for them to do the same for tiny little cancer sticks.) No, what they want to do is discredit the EPA's stance on global warming so that they can then go, "Hey, if you thought that was crazy, they also said that second-hand smoke causes cancer! Can you believe those idiots?"
Basically it's argument by association. Very clever stuff; I can't remember another corporation doing anything quite like this before.
Rob
Because people will pay high prices for information that proves to be correct.
Another way to put it is that actors in the free market never choose to supply accurate information of their own accord. It is forced upon them by the freeness of the market, which allows any competitor to sabotage them by exposing lies.
If Dell wants to bullshit you about what's inside their boxen, it won't work, not because Michael Dell has a conscience, but because HP and Sony would gleefully jump on the chance to expose the lie in the hopes of stealing Dell's market share.
You've got it backwards. It's not that accurate information exchange produces a free market, it's that a free market produces accurate information exchange. You find the worst lies and deceptions (including self-deceptions) in a non-free market, e.g. in a planned economy, or equivalently within a firm so large and generally successful that hiring and firing depend more on manager's impressions and prejudices than on actual success in the marketplace.
"bogus (but authoritative sounding) research institutes designed to convince laypeople that human causation of global warming is scientifically controversial."
Oh no, it's a given. After all, the inventor of the internet has said it so it must be true. What, with all of Al Gores impressive scientific background, how could anyone doubt it.....
You guys are such a bunch of chicken littles it's unreal. Much of the "scientific" (by that I mean those working in climatology and meterology not those working on womens rights and black issues) community does have considerable doubt about human interactions effect on climate and, so called, "global warming". Global warming itself has never been shown to exist by anyone other than pseudo scientists and folks working for agencies that benefit from the idea of same. Get facts and stop regurgitating the what you're told. Why not look at some of the data yourself? It's out there.....
...although I'd say your post is a prime example of picking out what you're interested in and ignoring the rest of The Fine Article.
The article is about paid lobbyists representing the richest corporations in the world while pretending to be something else entirely. So where so-called "global warming fanatics" are concerned, I don't see the similarity, whether some of them are overly-selective or not.
Perhaps all of the recent (and much-needed) attention that the climate crisis has been getting makes you uncomfortable because of conscience, or having picked the wrong side, or just aesthetics, or whatever. Irregardless, please do try to point out actual gross misrepresentations of fact when leveling blame 'back at ya' and save us from that nebulous smoke you're trying to blow up our @sses.
Is there a law that makes it illegal to go about spreading false information in order to protect your business interests or whatever? We all know it's actionable if the information is directed as specific parties, but what about spreading general and potentially dangerous lies against the public interest? What if, for example, someone created a convincing campaign suggesting that AIDS isn't real and that no one needs to take precautions? Or in this case, attempting to subvert real evidence of planetary habitat damage by presenting false evidence of your own?
It's actionable if "the media" spreads lies. It's actionable if lies are told about specific parties. Why would it or should it be legal if it is found that lies are told to subvert public interest?
I'm pretty sure that if there is enough convincing evidence, that civil class-action suits can be brought against companies, individuals and other entities on behalf of the planet. I just don't see how or why these parties should be able to get away with this crap. We have lost more than several decades of time in preparing to take action against planatary damage and probably hundreds of years or more in the healing process. All this for a few trillion dollars, control over the world and sex?
How do these people sleep at night?
Stay out of politics /. You are being used.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to think "profiling is worse than the slaughter of innocent people..."
I am going to outline why I think Global warming is bad science. I have spent some time looking into it and what I have found truly makes me wonder why some of these reports get published. It scares me that so many slashdot people believe in it. When I read the reports I find so much missing it is not funny.
.2c. So the warming trend may be as high as .7c and as low as .3c. I can see this, but add to this that the temperature measurements have a posted error correction of +/- .7c we now have a problem. The global warming that may be happening is within the error rate of the temperature measurement. If Microsoft tried to use numbers like this we would tare them apart but the global warming crowd uses them and they are ok?
The most common omission I find is the error level on charts. Take the ice core samples, what is the error level? Most I have seen have stated that the current PPM of CO2 is at an all time high! It has been stated that the current CO2 levels are 330+ ppm and from ice cores we know it has never been higher, or do we? What is the error level of the ice cores? +/- ??? If it is +/- 500ppm than the charts are junk, if it is +/- 2ppm then they may mean something. To date I have not been able to find anything that states the accuracy of the reading or the error level of the ice cores.
The general consensus is that the global temp is up 0.5c +/-
To those how would point to the chart that shows us warming, they all seem to start around 1880. This is odd as this marks the end of the little ice age, to say that we are warmer now than we were during the little ice age is, well, duh!
To those that would point to the hockey stick, this has been shown to have issues. The least of which is the 15th century portion. This portion of the hockey stick graph is based on tree ring measurements from a single tree. Once they started averaging the numbers, it skewed the chart. Not to count the errors in temperature readings before 1960.
So where is the good solid science? And please do not point to local anomies as a sign of global warming. Heck recently I heard some one say that it is getting cooler because of global warming. What? Sounds like a setup for "we will win!" Ill make you a deal, we will play tic-tac-toe and as long as I can stop you from getting three in a row, I win.
I am sorry, the science seems off and with out solid science to back it up I just can not believe the hype.
Yes, my libertarianism is only a streak, and my green streak is prolly just as big.
Another thing that I find in libertarian theory is the splintering of human life into discrete "transactions". Economic analysis is obviously powerful, but treating every aspect of society as a purchase seems incredibly reductive
In addition to having imperfect information (always having imperfect information) one must consider the fact that people don't always act in their rational self-interest. Which is to say, they don't always act economically
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Weather and Climate are two very different things. No one close to responsible is claiming they can predict the weather 20 years out, that's a straw man. Some people are claiming they can predict Climate trends. They may not have done this successfully, but there's nothing "absurd" about the idea itself.
I can't predict accurately when any given person will die. I can stlll show that various diseases have various mortality rates, or make money if I own an insurance company, or state that the population explosion is a fact.
You might also notice that, by your arguement, we not only can't prove global warming exists, we can't prove there is such a thing as a hurricane season, a tornado season, forest fire season, or that 'indian summer' or 'el-nino' are meaningful terms.
Incidentally, some weather is very predictable, often for a lot more than 3 days. Just this last late summer, there was a hot, dry cell that moved across the entire USA, from west to east. Weathermen predicted it would go all the way to the east coast at near constant speed, that temperatures would be well above normal, rain would be low, and that offshore storms would be deflected by the high pressure for the first week or so of the Atlantic hurricane season, and called a lot of events accurately two and three weeks or even more out (unless you want to define accurately as "precise to the last mm of fainfall and 1/10th of a degree). Weather is usually the combination of a lot of interlaced different trends - whenever one trend is measured in current time as big enough to predominate, predictability goes up quite a bit.
Who is John Cabal?
Says the feds burned those people on purpose.
Response to MC by professional climatologist. Summary: He's not right.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
no text
I KNOW people want to believe this. That's fine. It's a belief, great. So is Catholicism. And, like Catholicism, that doesn't mean it's fact. Global warming, right now is a theory with lots of supporting evidence, but no proof. If it had proof, it wouldn't be a theory.
"Gravity" is just a theory. That things denser than air fall toward the surface of the Earth is a fact, as are other facts that relate to gravity. The theory of gravity (pick one... Newton's, Einstein's...) attempts to explain those facts and predict further facts from such an explanation. No amount of watching things fall will EVER "prove" the theory of gravity correct, at least in such a way to change it from a "theory" to a "fact".
Likewise, that the average surface temperature of the Earth is increasing is a fact ("global warming"). There are theories that attempt to explain this. Some of these theories are well-supported by the facts. Others may not be. But none of them will even be "proven" and elevated to anything beyond a theory.
Theories aren't proven. They don't become facts, no matter how much support they receive or how well they hold up. Theories are always theories and being "just a theory" doesn't make an idea any less sound.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
"Climate is what we expect. Weather is what we get."
(Robert Heinlein, I believe)
So if I write a book and show that Global Warming is just hype and propaganda, do I get
"courtesy placement" on slashdot too??! After all it says so in a book...!!
As far as I'm concerned, "The Guardian" in general, and Monbiot in particular don't have a whole lot of credibility. I REALLY do NOT like tobacco companies, but fail to see what they'd gain by doing something like this. If I read it in, say, "The Economist", then I'll give it more credence.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Drop the word lung, and things change.
Global Warming is just this mass consensus all scientists agree to in order to receive more funding. We need much more accurate data before this can be proven or disproven. Just imagine how inaccurate temperature readings were from even 100 years back (we're almost talking about cavemen recording temperatures on their holy scrolls). Then remember that temperature readings gathered in other ways (such as from arctic ice, etc.) are not 100% accurate either. They have +/- just like polling results. Then think about what scientists define global warming as ... it's a global temperature rise of a few fractions of a degree. So, could it not be possible that with all the inaccuraces of historical temperatures that there is actually Global Cooling? Or even worse, there really has been no change at all? But don't bother reading my post, because the /. moderators will come by and mod it down anyways because it has no actual proof or scientific data, just right-wing common sense.
This sounds to me more like Objectivism - Ayn Rand stuff. I realize that a lot of self-styled "Libertarians" subscribe to the theories of Objectivism, but I don't think that the two are exactly the same. Or perhaps this is what Libertarianism has become. I've personally favored Libertarian ideals, but if these have become tainted by business and by Objectivism, then I will re-think the next time I consider supporting them.
Well, the 'free market' never has been; it's a model that has simply never existed.
As you say, it's an idealized theory which probably can never fully exist since governments will always try to skew the results, and any policies which attempt to control trade, tarrifs, or anything like that will undermine the so-called ideal free market. It certainly never has existed except as an explaination for how some of the more opaque aspects of economies are happening.
Why ever are you still labouring under the belief that such a situation can ever occur? We're in a period of companies bordering on Oligopolies and nations playing protectionist games with supplies and valuations. We're also in a context where the relative value of one person's labour is out of whack with that of people in another country.
The large companies, who can buy/lobby for laws in their favour, which the government enforces for them, and who can distort truth with bad science, PR, spin, and relying on the lack of critical reasoning skills/interest by the populace are not even remotely interested in 'efficient value allocation'. The cards are stacked in their favour, and they want to keep it that way.
Politics, profit, and agenda drive much of the discourse happening in our society. Don't like someone's opinion? Invent a fictitious research center to put out a whitepaper which supports your view. You can so successfully muddy the waters that your argument sounds as good as someone else's, and people can't tell. It's the intellectual equivelant of sticking your fingers in your ears and saying "la la la la la la" to indicate you're not listening.
Hell, if you try hard enough, you can try to teach that evolution is just some wild-assed guess of a 'theory' with no supporting evidence, and you can argue that your hoodoo magic is better than someone else's hoodo magic and discredit all of science and rational thought in a few paragraphs. The actual scientists who study global climate issues are pretty unanimous -- the toadies and PR people of the people who don't want to believe (or, don't want us to believe) just try to make their claims stand on pretty equal footing in the tradition of "well my opinion is as good as your opinion, even if your opinion is actually science".
The world is a very long fscking way away from "efficient value allocation", and isn't trying to get there.
I'm not trying to flame you here, but I wouldn't get too closely wedded to that wonderful abstraction which is a completely free market which operates ultimately to all of our benefits. It aint like that. It's a bunch of people with big piles who want to fix the game so that all those without big piles are not allowed to play the game at all.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
No wonder that your family is no longer libertarian. I am not Libertarian (mainly because most libertarians don't understand that there is a difference between libertarianism and anarchism.)
The reason that Libertarianism could work in a real world is that the precepts are based on the real world concept that no person or group of people should have any more power than is absolutely necessary. The reason for this failure is the lack of will and education in the people.
Libertarianism is the only sustainable gov't. All others will crumble under their own weight sooner or later. A truly libtertarian gov't is so light that it would float on the tumultuous surface of the populace, providing for law and cleanliness, but lacking the power to deny anyone their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Another way to put it is that actors in the free market never choose to supply accurate information of their own accord.
Not so. A vendor with the superior product will of course prefer to let that be known.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Or it could be that he moderated at one point, got bad meta-moderations (for whatever reason) and was subsequently blacklisted from moderating.
I think this is what's happened to me; I used to get points very regularly, and then all of a sudden about 18 months ago stopped getting them, and haven't had any since.
On the bright side, I spend more time reading and writing comments now than I ever did when I was moderating regularly.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
"relies on something that does not exist: the perfect human being."
Actually I think it relies on perfect markets, which don't exist either.
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Prof. Dumbledore
"Historically mild?"
Where did you get that little "data point" from? The drastic swings indicated by ice core samples are so far back they're from PRE-history.
It must be tough being a conspiracy theorist when most of your targets of blame never get any more specific than "the left" (i.e. scientists) and have almost no assets or power worth speaking of compared to the ultra-wealthy interests trying to discredit them.
Yes, Big Tobacco and Big Oil have common interests. So do the Big Automotive Industry and Big Entertainment. Big Media, Big Military Contractors, and that Biggest of all Big Boys, Haliburton (which industry ARE they in anyway?).
To the extent that Science and Reason, the Romulus and Remus of the foundation of modern culture, learn that certain behaviors of Big Money have a negative impact on the lives of human beings worldwide, Big Money will do everything in its power (and its power is immense) to try to deny, cover up, bury and buy off the scientists and other reasonable humans who try to spread the news.
Today, Media and Government have been coopted by Big Money. Lock, stock and smoking barrels, nearly every large Media Provider and certainly every part of Government has been bought off in the most egregious ways. There's barely an effort to cover it up any more. Decades ago when General Electric bought one of the Big Three television networks, there were voices screaming out that this could mean the death of the free exchange of information. Those voices were exactly right. When was the last time that you saw anything on television that specifically challenged the Consumerist/Globalist status quo. The FCC has allowed those big corporations to consolidate television, radio and print media to the point where a very few very powerful and rich organizations now own every single media outlet of any size and influence (Wired Magazine included).
Our government (small "g") could possibly be the ombudsman of the interests of human beings in this equation, but because of the money involved in running for office, that will never happen. Something happens to the most honest of men when they are handed a big check by a hail-fellow-well-met who winks at them and says, "it's good to have friends". And nobody gets to hold office without spending sums of money that absolutely REQUIRE Big Money donors. There have been efforts to finance elections publicly, but Those In Power have shot down those efforts by (how ironic) calling them "anti-free speech". Somehow, in the last few decades, money had come to equal speech.
It may be that it's too late for elections, op-eds or clever blogs to make any difference in the corporate ownership of our government. Stories about Diebold and voter fraud that have been all over the news lately are evil harbingers of a message that few of us can stomach admitting: Our freedom is lost. Oh sure, we have plenty of room to express our cynicism, our snarkiness, our wise-alecky comments about President Chimpy McHitler, but if there was any danger of a message getting out that could endanger the profits of our kleptigarchs, it would never see the light of day. Progressive messages will get thrown around in the run-up to the November elections, but SURPRISE! in the "closest election in history", the forces of Corporate Domination will win again. "Better luck next time" they'll say, and with all the sick optimism of a diehard Cubs fan, many of us will dig in for another 2 years of irony, cynicism and snarky comments on blogs.
It may just be time that those of us who still crave a world where individuals matter, where government actually acts in the interest of the people, where the ideas of men like Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, who believed in the message of Enlightenment, can still live, must act. And we must act in bold and dynamic ways.
We must act in ways that can't be covered up by a complicit media. As silly as it may sound to you technical boy-wonders who read Slashdot today, things like general strikes, mass demonstrations, civil disobedience might be our only chance at this point. And it might not be enough. But if we don't try, then it's definitely too late already.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Tobacco smoking doesn't cause cancer significantly in Japanese populations... which has double the smokers of America.
Perhaps it's the moderation vs. excess principle.
Although it does cause emphesema, which is holes in lungs, it can't be conclusively linked to cancer in humans... at least when it is not used at say, 2-3 packs per day.
I'm no socialist. I think there's sometimes good reason for allowing billionaire's to prevent poor people taking their food. But I'm not so brainwashed as to think that it's axiomatic and in absolutely no need of justification. Only a libertarian could have such a twisted view of 'liberty'.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
The power of corporations to manipulate people on such a large scale is handed to them by the government.
:)
Libertarianism, or more specifically, anarchism lacks flaws because however you slice it, there is no denying that we have lived, and survived both systems.
The only human beings that can't survive under such systems are the useless ones, ie today's drug dealers. Or bureaucrats
The organization at the core of all of this is The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC). Odd linky which connects them to here.
...
Ready for the brain-twister? They are pro nuclear energy.
Demonize away!
The other interesting tidbit found here (sorry about the horrid flash link) is that Exxon has moved $12+ million (discoverable) towards anti-global warming organizations. That sounds like a lot -- until you realize they make a billion $ a day
I'm thinking about it, therefore I might be.
It's scary how many /.-ers seem to hold opinions like the grand-parent of this post.
Then again, many (probably most) of us are American, and we are the guys who:
- Believe that evolution is "junk science"
- Don't believe in global warming
- Are proud to be "Ditto Heads"
- Fell prey fear during the Salem Witch Trials, the McCarthy Era, and now Neoconservatism
If you need public support for a scientifically proven wrong point of view, simply back the majority of us who think science is bunk. Join the Religious Right, Big Tobacco, Exxonmobil, and the Neoconservatives in taking advantage of (and promoting) our ignorance.
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
You are just as likely to get oral cancer, especially lip cancer.
I thought it was already determined that global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of pirates since the 1800s. Since when has the tobacco industry had an anti-pirate agenda?
I had to. It's Talk like a Pirate Day.
Sirrah, you have convinced me! I'm going to get on a plane right now so I can find George Monbiot and kick him right in the balls.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
But behind the smoke and heat .. are much larger forces than man made whatever.
.. enough to dwarf anything man does. Not to mention the effects of volcanos.
.. it don't matter much anyway.
.. after the methane hydrate deposits erutp and gasses us all for a few million years.
The shape of the orbit around the sun and the actual temperature of the sun are far larger forces
So regardless of what these corporate criminals do
Besides, the effect of global warming is going to be - a frozen earth
The computer purchasing examples you gave are short-range decisions. Market forces do not work for long-range decisions or other large scale domains (like the average temperature of the ecosphere).
The solution will only come from a combination of political will, (regulated) markets and academic meritocracy.
Trying to see a solution to something like the climate crisis within market economics should be taken as a sign of dangerous ideological monomania. In the school of hard knocks we call that "cruisin for a bruisin".
In the idealized theory, the market must have perfect information about products.
Actually, market theories take into account the COST of information and the tradeoffs of paying more for better (but still imperfect) info versus absorbing more risk by deciding on less info, or less reliable info.
Other work relates to decision making on imperfect information and asymetric information situations (where buyers and sellers have different info resources).
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Anytime a correlation approached 1 (like I need to tell this crowd), relavance of the subject approaches zero. In the Second hand smoke study (A meta study by the EPA), the correlation bounded 1 at the 95% confidence interval. This doesn't look very good for someone trying to say "Second hand smoke is bad". So what does the EPA do? They lower the confidence interval to 90%. Please check out Numberwatch for discussions of why 95% is a really bad number. Any number less is just plain FRAUD.
Even with the lower confidence interval (p value or poisson ratio inverted), the EPA was only able to show a Relative Risk (correlation) of 1.19. Everyone run for the hills.
Even First Hand smoke is a little dubious. As JEB at numbewatch puts it, saying that smoking causes cancer is like that fertilizer cause tomatoes to grow. Using the same statistics that make the CDC say that 400,000 people each year die prematurely from smoking, you can say that 200,000 people each year are saved by smoking. The calculation is fraudulent, irrelavent and insulting.
Mr. Brigness of Numberwatch would love to be on the payroll of any of those illustrious companies, but he just keeps fighting irrational numbers because he is ornery, not because he has a financial axe to grind. Actually he does, he just doesn't get to see the money flow into his coffers.
Remember the Global Warming industry is rolling to the tune of $2.5 Billion. But it doesn't matter if they have fiscal motivation for crying wolf.
This is a crowd of programmers. Don't we have people here who have experience dealing with non-linear coupled models. We did a project in Engineering to model a Cross-flow heat exchanger inside a building. The dynamics of X-Flow are moderately well understood. 20 students made 20 models we had 20 solutions with different outputs, no correlation whatsoever. The professor was stumped. He failed to recognize that when you start approximating Nusselt, Prandl, Russel, and several other factors, you are pretty much screwed especially when they are all hinged upon each other. That was in a contained system. One in which all boundary conditions have been specifically defined. Got news for the Global Circulation Modelers, they aint got that.
God: "I don't leave footprints!"
The Japanese diet seems to have some protective effects. Japanese women who move the US have higher breast cancer rates, for example. If so that would account for some difference.
Even so the Japanese get lung cancer from smoking. From a Japanese lung cancer study:
There are several rights that, usually, libertarians see as fundamental and unalienable. Those include The right to property. One person's rights (the right to live, and to seek ways to continue to live) do not override another person's rights (the right to property). An individual's rights end where the next person's begin.
Your analogy is deeply flawed. You assume no right to property. Without a right to property, either nobody owns anything, or everyone owns (and shares) everything. The first one... I'm not sure what that would fall under... The second one would be communism/socialism.
So, pop quiz. Which seems more likely to you? (a) A cabal of college professors, not standing to lose much of anything, jeopardize their careers and their scientific credibility by conducting a widespread campaign of disinformation to subvert the scientific process and whip the public into a panic. (b) A cabal of titanic multinational corporations, standing to lose untold billions if carbon controls are implemented, conducts a widespread campaign of disinformation to subvert the scientific process and confuse the public.
I understand that it makes for good airplane reading, but come on. In the real world, Occam's Razor rips the whole mess to shreds. (Plus, isn't it telling that the best bit of media global warming deniers have on their side is an unabashed work of fiction?)
(Also, if you're going to claim the existence of the aforementioned scientist conspiracy, please provide at least as much evidence as there already is for option (b). Thanks.)
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
How will the political process produce BETTER results than the market process? Hint: look at current politicians. They are an inevitable outcome of the political process, not a temporary glitch which we could fix if we just tweaked a few things.
In what way? All corporations need to manipulate people on a large scale is technology, specifically mass media. If anything, the government regulates teh ability of corporations to manipulate people.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Oh, please. Al Gore is hardly fearmongering. If you take a quick glance, you'll see that the ExxonMobil noise machine makes a set of claims, and Al Gore makes a set of claims. You could be forgiven for thinking that, naturally, the truth lies just about in the middle. Most people don't have the time or the inclination to do their own research, and this is a common strategy---one tha the aforementioned noise machine takes advantage of.
ExxonMobil's claims are lies, half-truths, distortions and deceptive readings of old evidence. If they have evidence, they should submit it to the same process everyone else goes through. But they don't. They should influence your thinking on climate change about as much as the profusion of ID books at your local Christian bookshop means that it's just about as correct as evolutionary theory. The claims that Gore makes are backed up by consensus. By the best methods we have of finding things out, this is what we know.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
they'd be much better off denying cancer exists.
How does Libertarianism deal with groups of people (like corporations) that manage to amass a large amount of power (more than is 'necessary'). Who defines what necessary is? Does Libertariamism say that it is okay for someone to rise through their own ability to the level of a King or Emporer where, by their own self-gained power, they are able to impose their will onto others?
There's a reason why we live better in the USA than people did in the Soviet Union, or in the typical middle-east dictatorship.
Indeed, and that reason is mostly to do with the rule of law and a well regulated market, which is not much like the "free market" libertarians defend. Nations with better-regulated markets than the U.S., like Canada, Denmark and Sweden to name but a few, have populaces that live better than people in the USA do. At least according the UN measure of quality of life.
Neither libertarianism nor communism require "perfect humans", whatever those might be. But they do require human beings to be other than they actually are, and therefore have not been notably successful in the creation of stable societies.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
government gives corporations a ton of legal protections, they are able to be publicly traded, etc.
Basically their immense growth is supported by government. IMO in a libertarian society more "corporations" (read: large companies, since corporate entity is a government word) would be regionally based since they dont have a legal blanket to toss over all the states and have a big picnic on.
>>The inevitable conclusion of the book is that global warming is a non-problem.
/. summary surprisingly.) We simply don't have sufficient understanding (or data) of climate change on a *global* scale.
That's not what *I* got out of the book. The point *I* was impressed with was that although global warming IS occuring, AND although it's a good idea to worry about our environment, we have no proof that the global warming is being affected by humans (or that we could stop it from happening). (Which matches more closely with the
I guess this is technically off-topic, but I hate, HATE those Truth.com commercials
You got that right: Your feelings about commercials on TV are offtopic.
To see a bunch of snotty college kids in commercials going around telling everyone how evil cigarettes are, when you know these same kids get drunk and smoke weed on the weekends
Wow, typecasting much! Wanna add something about their mama, while you're at it?
they even dupe local governments into complying and forming a nice little pseudo-fascist state where you can be arrested for daring let a smoker into your club or restaurant (but remember, drunks and stoners are a-okay!).
1- Stoners are routinely put in prison.
2- If you drink next to me, I don't get second-hand drinks in my stomach.
When your smoke stays out of my lungs and eyes, and when its stink stays out of my clothes and hair you'll have a point. In the meantime, you couldn't be further from the truth.
You can't take the sky from me...
We also hold that because human beings are imperfect, we really can't trust anyone to tell us what to do.
But if you thought about the first post in this thread, you'd realise it was discussing a specific kind of imperfection: the fact that, as we walk down a supermarket aisle, we are incapable of discerning important underlying properties of the things we might buy. Most people buy Phillip Morris food products without realising that they are paying for environmental astroturf.
This specific kind of imperfection requires collective action to solve. Voluntary "ethical labelling" is pretty ineffective, because it is easy for firms to invent easy-to-obtain certifications of environmental- or health-friendliness or decent labour conditions.
The collectivist solution is to prohibit products with dubious environmental, health or labour credentials. An intermediate solution is to use mandatory labelling requirements. It's hard to get those solutions right, but they're still far better than any liberatrian options.
Fixing copyright
Libertqarians talk a l0ot about liberty, but if you look at the actual belief, it is more about capitalism and business, so called "property rights." As I note downthread, property is at odds with liberty. It's not really natural for anybody to "own" anything, especially non-human entities like corporations. Someone must be deprived of liberty for somebody to own something. And how do you enforce those ownership rights? By asking nicely, or by theatening infringers with loss of liberty?
... and then they built the supercollider.
Teehee, my post was labeled as flamebait. Isn't that what a cigarette is?
So tell me - how do you provide law & order, without the power to deny anyone their liberty?
... and then they built the supercollider.
/. is just being used and abused.
But what if Dell, HP and Sony all use the same parts in their boxes, and all have a vested interest in bullshitting you? That's how much of the market works - via oligopoly. In other words, strength in numbers. Much like all of the movie studios or record labels working together to spread lies through the RIAA and MPAA. These companies often scratch each others' backs, because they gain more from strengthening the industry as a whole, than they do by competing with each other, or by informing the consumer.
In most ways, these companies are more friendly with each other than they are with the consumer. I don't see Libertarianism changing that. It would just remove and government restrictions on their collusion and dishonesty.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Market forces do not work for long-range decisions.
So? Explain the colonization of the New World between AD 1500 and 1800, then. Or the rise of feudalism over the four centuries between the Roman Empire and Charlemagne the Great.
Trying to see a solution to something like the climate crisis within market economics should be taken as a sign of dangerous ideological monomania.
You're mistaking economics for an ideology. It's not. It's an anti-ideology. It's a way of explaining how the world actually works. Ideologies are a way of arguing how the world should work. Economics has nothing to say about how a "solution" to a climate crisis ought to be found (if we can even agree on what the "solution" is). It only describes what will actually happen if various "solutions" are implemented, which may or may not be what was intended to happen.
Hence I'm going to say you have it exactly backward: trying to find a solution to something like a climate crisis without paying attention to what economics teaches us is the way people behave is a sign of a dangerous attachment to ideology and a Peter-Pan-like belief that reality can be what we all wish it to be, if only we wish real hard. You might as well argue against paying attention to the laws of physics when designing spaceships because they're damn inconvenient sometimes.
I think the term big tobacco should be retired seeing as how the people that are against them are about a thousand times larger.
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
Hypothetically speaking, every smoker puts out at least 2-3 times the amount of CO2 than a nonsmoker. Now multiply that times a conservatively estimated one billion smokers around the world. The combined CO2 output would be approximately that of 10+ billion people. I have only some basic numbers and data to base this on, but I'm sure there's studies that could prove this (or at least show numbers significantly higher)
In urban areas alone, this would be like having an uncontrolled burn day for said smokers. All for a ton of inefficiently burning catalysts delivering a toxic drug to addicts. If people were burning tons of fall leaves and rubbish on their front lawns, they'd be fined out the wazoo. And of course there's the irony of smoking in urban areas to begin with.
A rough calculation for the US alone shows that 27% of Americans are smokers, out of a population of over 299 million. Now when you have 80,939,880 people smoking in the US alone, you have the CO2 output of 242,819,641 people!
(disclaimer: And mind you, I'm a smoker, and even the thought of this makes me want to quit even more)
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Weather and Climate are two very different things. No one close to responsible is claiming they can predict the weather 20 years out, that's a straw man.
Sure they do, Its what the Kyoto Protocol was all about. If they weren't saying that could predict to some degree climate change, they wouldn't have the impetus to propose radical reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. As matter of fact this debate would not be occuring at all if one side was not predicting catestrophic climate change ranging from drowing cities to desertification to a new ice age.
I can't predict accurately when any given person will die. I can stlll show that various diseases have various mortality rates, or make money if I own an insurance company, or state that the population explosion is a fact.
while that is true, its a bit of comparing apples to oranges. A more accurate comparison would be claiming to be able to predict the mortality rate of any illness, dieseases, etc in the future, or more comparibly human overall human mortality say in 20 years over the entire globe. We all know that would be absurd because humans die in greately differing numbers every year from a wide variety of reasons, such as war, famine, plauge, etc.
Its alos interesting that you bring in Insurance and Actularial science in on this. recentely there has been a great deal of blows to long term perdicitons, even mid term predictions that insurance companies have been making. Its becoming increasingly apparent that predicting the future is a much harder science than previously thought, even when when we think we have a firm grasp on a subject; which is not the case with climate studies.
"Libertqarians talk a l0ot about liberty, but if you look at the actual belief, it is more about capitalism and business, so called "property rights." As I note downthread, property is at odds with liberty. It's not really natural for anybody to "own" anything, especially non-human entities like corporations. Someone must be deprived of liberty for somebody to own something. And how do you enforce those ownership rights? By asking nicely, or by theatening infringers with loss of liberty?"
Private property is a foundational concept of libertarianism and can be shown to be natural to a certian extent (animal territorality comes to mind). Corporations are not libertarian in nature because they require government, which incidentally is the head of a corporation. Pure libertarianism is about as utiopian as every other concept of government. The difference is that libertarian economics are founded upon something all humans do naturally which is to freely exchange things. Lassiz faire is simply a way of having no restrictions on what people want to exchange which requires liberty. It is what creates wealth. Mises and Rothbard have demonstrated time and again that governments do not create wealth, they destroy it.
But what if Dell, HP and Sony all use the same parts in their boxes, and all have a vested interest in bullshitting you?
Why, some bright young entrepreneur -- like Michael Dell himself, once upon a time -- will come along and realize he can make a killing in the PC market by exposing all the lies and selling boxes that don't have the fatal weakness.
These companies often scratch each others' backs, because they gain more from strengthening the industry as a whole, than they do by competing with each other, or by informing the consumer.
Er...have you actually worked for a company in a competitive industry, or been in business at all, or are you just speaking from pure theory? All the firms for which I've worked in the past twenty years have been viciously trying to slaughter their competitors all the time. Their sales forces disparage each other all the time. They watch jealously to see if the other guys have some minute advantage and quickly try to copy it or neutralize it or slander it as quickly as possible. They'd hire mercenaries to kill the other guys' employees and blow up their headquarters if it were only legal.
Look, if it were that natural for people to just all go along and do what's best for the group, we wouldn't be having a big discussion about global warming, would we?
this doesn't pass the smell test. there's no sureer way of getting more people on the side of your cause than to lump the other side with existing known boogeymen.
next we're going to learn that people who don't believe the moon landing was faked are aligned with nazis
You've hit on the difference between 'Libertarians' and the U.S. 'Libertarians' of the Libertarian party. The former are a long tradition of anarchists (anarcho-socialists to be precise) and the latter are an amalgam Randian objectivists and simple anarcho-capitalists.
The anarcho-capitalist position, in a strange inversion of the Marxist postiion, is that industry would never abuse its power like government does. (*cough*bullshit*cough*) You've hit the nail on the head as to why this can't work.
The anarchist/socialist position is that this really *is* a problem. All it takes is one large businessman with a private police force (which ancaps argue in favor of quite often) and he'll try to invent a government to protect his interests.
Under anarchism, however, there's little he can do. Anarchism does not respect property, only possessions. Property is supported via coercion -- it's the only way to have more than you can reasonably keep or use. Possessions are socially supported, and acceptable under anarchism. (Your toothbrush and your car are possessions. Your neighbors don't want to use your toothbrush, and they'd all agree that your car is important for you to have. If you rent your house, it's your landlord's property, but your possession. Anarchist ideals would say he ought to stop charging rent. Your landlord may be a nice guy, but he's still engaging in an immoral system that can be traced all the way back to a guy with a shiny hat telling some peasants "I own you and your land now! Give me part of everything you own or my friends here will stick pointy bits of metal into your kidneys! HARD!")
Since anarchism also implies widespread social resistance to any coercion, the capitalist is screwed. He can send orders to some employees to send him all the money from their day's output, but they can just claim possession of it and tell him to piss off. He can send in goons, but the problem is that ruling classes and goons are outnumbered by those they seek to control. (What's more, if I'm an anarchist, it's in my best interest tomorrow that no-one is allowed to control you today.) If the employees pick up guns, and the guys working next door pick up guns, and their neighbors pick up guns, the goons will be fleeing or dead very quickly.
The only way for capitalist property to exist is via the application of force. Government is a slightly more civilised third-party form of force that the owning classes can call on instead of using their own goons. If you can throw off government, modern business is suddenly much weaker and won't stand a chance by comparison. Capitalist business goes the way of the dodo, replaced by a mix of small owner-run businesses and large boss-free collectives and syndicates.
If you've got any questions about anarchism, take a dip into the FAQ over at flag.blackened.net. It's pretty good, although very comprehensive. And by comprehensive, I mean frickin' HUGE. Don't try to read the whole thing, just jump around and check out anything you find interesting.
1. I'd be way more likely to believe all this talk about how ExxonMobil has no particular interest in public opinion on global warming if they hadn't created a vast network to spread disinformation on the subject. As it is, you've got some hand-waving there against a massive noise machine. The facts speak for themselves.
2. Have you even seen most of the policy recommendations laid out in An Inconvenient Truth? They mostly center around greater efficiency (drive a smaller car, commute less, conserve electricity). Saying "corn ethanol is backed by an evil megacorp, so climate change is a myth" is a red herring.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Good point.
But...won't he even more prefer to have his product be considered just a little bit more superior than it actually is? Arguably it's the market that lets him get away with nothing more than the actual truth.
There seem to be (at least) three obstacles that stop us from taking any action:
I'm awake! The answer is BONK!
> These whiny irritants love imposing their feelings about smoking on business owners and everyone else.
And the same asshats are gearing up to make McD's change their menu to reflect their 'enlightened notions' of what you should be eating. Of course these same dipshits are also trying to decide what sort of unsafe at any speed piece of plastic crap car you 'want' to drive in the name of 'global warming' while THEY fly their fucking private jets to (press) conferences to announce what they want to impose on us tomorrow, for our own good of course.
And anyway, Today's Daily Hate thread points to an article in the fscking Guardian.... my what a reliable source that is, why not just link to Daily Kos guys, he is probably a more credible source!
And yes, reasonable people CAN question both A) the existence of Global Warming and B) whether any/all of any Global Warming which might exist is caused by humans. Personally I'm leaning more to the some Global Warming is happening but with the observed increase in solar output (and evidence of warming on Mars) that it is mostly natural. But if it can be shown that it is going to get bad enough we should meddle in Gaia's 'plan' and do something artifical to lower the temp a bit, perhaps a space based solar shade.
Democrat delenda est
Pointing out there were oscillations in the last 120,000 years does not support your assertion that anthropogenic climate change is made-up. The trend in climate research shows that there are significant natural mechanisms to account for past oscillations.
The fact is, we were in a mild warming trend before GHGs skyrocketed. And neither you nor Exxon can explain an alternate (natural) mechanism for this.
I really hate hearing that term. The anti-smoking industry (yes, it is a huge money grubbing industry) has convinced the public that smoking is killing X number of people by making up this term 'Smoking related illeness'. For example Lung Cancer. If you die of lung cancer, you are immediatly added to the total number of people that died of 'smoking related illness' This is irrelevent to whether you would run 10 miles every day out in the desert, and consistently inhailed sand particles that were blown up in the air, and scratched the hell out of your lungs every day for 30 years. It must have been the evil second hand smoke!!!
I cannot believe for one second that inhailing the crap spewing out of the back of cars does not lead to 'Smoking related illness'.
Some of my favorite commercials that have come from the anti-smoking industry were, one where a half dozen early 20'ers are driving around in a beat up old van with nasty chemicals spewing from the tailpipe, while screaming over a megaphone at the houses of tabaco executives.
The one where they tell you that someone living with a smoke is more likely to die because the second hand smoke in so much more dangerous than the directly inhaled smoke. Completely ignoring the fact that the smoker will be breathing significantly more second hand smoke than anyone they live with.
And the one where they the tabaco industry MUST be advertising to kids, because 34 years ago one of their market researchers noticed that kids like sweets. Of course its a good thing that we got those secret documents, because we would have never know that kids like sweet otherwise, and after all, no adults like sweets.
The biggest here is that once an idea gets to a certain point, the proponents of that idea can just start out right lying. Then anyone that calls them on their lies gets villinized. After all, think of the children.
It's real simple. Smoking is bad for you. Anything that you inhail into your lungs that is not air (with a few medical exceptions) is bad for you. Smoking is NOT as bad as the smoking industry wants to make it out to be. If it was, 20% of our population would be dead within the next few year, and our society would be in freefall.
If you want a perfect example, look at the American Lung Association's website. If you can't see any questionable 'fact' in there, you have already drank the cool-aid.
The problem that the 'environmentalists' have is that their side of the global warming debate has been playing the same game as the anti-smoking industry. They have made many outragous claims, and frequently request or demand that people change their lives based on questionable data at best. Does that mean that we shouldn't work for cleaner air? No. Does it mean that global warming isn't happening? Who knows! What it does mean is that the issue IS in question, and when the global warming zeleots start claiming that the proof is undeniable, they are just adding to the distrust.
Ok, rant over....
I don't disagree - but WTF is this free market you speak of????? Is it in this solar system, or at least in this galaxy?????
Libertarianism is unworkable and deeply flawed. It, like Communism, relies on something that does not exist: the perfect human being. In order for Libertariansim to work all people must work towards their own elightened self interest. The problem is that's not how humans work.
This is interesting because it is a different way of looking at the same issue I have described before, and with much the same conclusions... but drastically different terminology. From everything I've read, economic extremism fails. Almost every economy is based upon communist cells of some size, operating competitively in a capitalist market, with some degree of socialism mitigating the gap between the very poor and very wealthy. What you refer to as communism, is in fact an economic system that has tried to enforce a very large communist cell size, with large amounts of socialism, and no internal capitalism. It is an extreme to try to eliminate capitalism and it fails, badly.
Libertarianism is a push for a smaller government that eliminates socialism and in some cases communism. It too fails, due to its extremism.
Your arguments about human nature are probably spot on. The balance of communism, socialism, and capitalism has developed in response to how humans operate and all reflect parts of human nature. Your assigning of a human that does not desire socialism as a "perfect" human does not jibe with my, personal opinions, but I think we're on different pages that read the same.
I see a lot of the same claims over and over again. "We can't predict the weather a week from now; how will we predict the climate in ten years?" "Michael Crichton says it's all a liberal conspiracy." I wish there existed a resource like the index to creationist claims at the talk.origins archive. Like, if someone says "yeah, well, even Darwiniacs admit there are gaps in the fossil record!", I can just say "BZZT! CC201!" and not have to repeat myself.
Something like that for climate change would be really, really useful.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
> Granted, the "new" equilibrium might be at a higher global-average temp and CO2 level than it was before
> we started burning oil and coal, but as soon as we settle in to whatever level that is, all the Chicken
> Littles out there can calm down about the "instability" of the biosphere.
Nope, wouldn't work. Because it is all a Big Lie, the average "Green" is actually what is known as a Watermelon, Green on the outside for cover but Red on the inside. Note that NO environmental problem has a suggested solution involving using technology to solve it. Sometimes they will advocate the use of tech as a shortterm mitigating factor while they get a treaty together to outlaw (but only in the West, can't deprive the "Developing world") whatever is pissing them off this week, but only as a stopgap. Each and every time their 'solution' involves A) lots more socialist government control and B) scaling back the 'excessive' consumption of Western Civilization. In actuality what they don't like is Western Civilization (i.e. individual liberty, capitialism and representitive governments) itself, the enviro whinging is just the latest thing they had success using to try and guilt trip us into rendering outselves extinct.
Democrat delenda est
There is no perfect market with perfect information, and nobody claims so, certainly not us libertarians. It is evident, that big business means big interest for many people, but so does big government (which typically has much more money than any companies). Also big grass roots movements mean big personal interests for many people, if not financially then at least emotionally. Everybody is biased. So who do you trust?
We really have this thing called the scientific community. It does not matter so much what the media says, or what the man in the street thinks is common sense (Einstein once said: "common sense" is just 200 years old science). Scientific community largely (and hopefully) lives its own life independent of media. Even Monbiot in TFA is not claiming, that the conservative think-thanks would do or sponsor fake science, they just claim that they mispresent basically sound scientific research.
Read the meteorologists. The truth really is, that we can not forecast the weather, not for two weeks, and certainly not for years or centuries to come. There are lots of uncertainties in meteorological research. Maybe it is time to do something about the climate change, but we must watch the costs of the measures taken, while doing more research. If the Earth atmosphere would be in such a volatile balance, that some extra CO2 can crash it, life would not have sustained millions of years here. The atmosphere must have cross-stabilizing effects, which keep it tolerable when any one component of the system is changing.
It is quite cleat that the industrial revolution has increased the CO2 level in the air.
It is suggested, but less clear, that the atmosphere is warming.
It is even less clear, that the CO2 is warming the atmosphere.
It is in no way clear, that the net effect of this warming will be negative.
It is absolutely unclear, if there are any good measures that we can take to stop this potential man made harm.
If there are some good measures, nobody has done any serious research about the time preference: whether we should invest money now to fight the warming, or whether we should invest ten times more after 50 years, when we know more. (With an interest rate of 5% these both choices cost the same in real value.)
It is very costly to limit CO2 output. This cost means worse living standards for billions of people, it means more human suffering. You can not just light-heartedly decide to enforce the Kioto protocols. It is a drastic measure. If man is acting as God when supposedly spoiling the atmosphere, men and women are also acting as Gods when they impose Kioto measures upons others, preventing them from raising out of their economical misery.
Anssi Porttikivi / app@iki.fi
Seriously? It's difficult to take things seriously when this person is quoted as a source.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0217-05.htm
"Walt Disney's characters are sinister because they encourage us, like those marchers, to promote the hegemony of the corporations even when we have no intention of doing so. He captured a deep stream of human consciousness, branded it and, when we were too young to understand the implications, sold it back to us. Comcast's hostile takeover bid suggests that the power of his company to seize our imaginations is declining. A giant media corporation may be about to become even bigger, but if the attack means that Disney is losing its ability to shape the minds of the world's children, this is something we should celebrate."
The man is a crazy and deranged extremist.
The only time businesses care about you is when you spend your money on their products and services.
Optimist.
The same principle should appy to smoke.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
The only time businesses care about me is when I threaten to spend my money on someone else's products and services.
Why is this post not filed under "It's funny. Laugh."?
More interesting is the role played big tobacco
Ignoring for a second the grammar mistake here kwdawson, even MORE interesting is who is behind the Pro-Global Warming Messages. Look into it sometime...
OK, I'll go ahead and give you a hint:
Until the global-warming warners divorce themselves from communist groups (instead of have them as their primary PR), they won't be taken seriously.
"If "big tobacco" is so bad, then why didn't we just outlaw tobacco or try to regulate nicotine?"
Because by the time it was figured out, there was a lot of tax and a lot of rich people involved. Losing either was not considered a sensible survival strategy by the governments in charge.
Oh, and pot is less dangerous for you than tobacco.
The difference is, they find them in reputable, peer reviewed journals, and written by people who actually understand climate science.
Ahh, so you understand climate science do you? Let's just test that little assertion shall we? Pop quiz:
For all four questions, the first answer is the correct answer. If you didn't already know this, please reconsider posting unless you plan to quote someone more educated on the subject than yourself... like for instance, "Dr. Hurricane" William Gray.
Oh, but there's plenty of peer reviewed scientific journals to refute him... I just don't have a hyperlink to those right now... I had one around here somewhere. Really, I did. I have proof, I just can't show it to you. You'll have to take my word on it. Everyone believes in global warming anyway... really! They do! Honest... you don't believe me? Wha.. well you must be an Oil Industry SHILL!! Err, Tobacco Industry SHILL!! Uh, I'm confused...The reason that Communism could work in a real world is that the precepts are based on the real world concept that no person or group of people should have any more power than is absolutely necessary. The reason for this failure is the lack of will and education in the people.
Economics is awful, and economists are mostly sports commentators.
What a shame the planet didn't turn out to work according to their world-view, which excludes ecological reality much as Lysenkoism did. Having "not much to say" about it may be understating things.
Libertarianism (or 'property-aryanism' as some like to call it) is an economic philosophy among other things. Hence, it is an ideology which basically counsels its followers to thwart political organizing for the sake of letting the market work out its own "magic" solution to big problems. Of course, these 'solutions' mosly work out in favor of the wealthiest 'wallet-voters' and its no surprise they form the overwhelming majority of adherents.
For most Libertarians, the "market" has become a more real entity than, say, "humanity" or "the ecosphere". Lately some prominent ones seem to have further demoted humanity in their hearts, replacing it with increasingly-fetishized (and demonized) religious and ethnic identities. I find they are less and less likely to say "person" or "people" and more likely to use "Jew", "Arabs", "Russian", "Irish", etc. to casually refer to people. And these are all very marketable, it turns out. Ask MS-NBC and FOX how profitable they are.
It isn't the heat of all that exhaust that is making the world hotter. It is the increase in certain long-wave-retardant gasses in the atmosphere.
The visible light comes in, heats the ground that then radiates long wave radiation. However, that radition can't get out. And so the atmosphere warms until it is warm enough to radiate that energy itself.
The efficacy of these gasses can be seen in the fact that at the Earths' distance from the Sun we should be on average 262K (about -9deg C). We are in fact at an average of something over 280K.
Another example is the tropical rainforest vs the tropical dessert. Despite similar daytime temperatures, the nighttime temps in the dessert are freezing but the rainforest is still hot.
So the variation of the insolation may be bigger, but the greenhouse effect is ongoing and incremental. If I dumped a bucket of water on your head, you'd be wet. drip-by-drip is considered torture.
For the free market to operate correctly, one must also assume that it's members will act rationally. Most humans don't. They avoid that information even when it's placed in front of them and they often don't act on it even if force-fed the information--(Lots of people still bought Nike's even after it was pointed out that child labor was being used to create them).
In addition, there is WAY too much info on each product for any consumer to take into account.
Conclusion? A truly free market cannot exist, ever, period. We NEED strong controls.
I thought Libertarianism was a great idea when I first heard of it like 20 years ago--most people would; If you observe history, however, you find that it mostly becomes an idolistic theory.
I personally like the principles when applied to individuals, but even then you need limits--We cannot allow most people to come into uncontrolled contact with hate speach because many many people obviously cannot handle it and become a problem for all of us.
When it comes to corporations and free market, the flaws mostly stem from the number of idiots. You can't make a free market when you have more than 50% of your population completely unable to comprehend the information they should be using to make decisions--and we're up to, what, 80% idiots?
For every protection there is a regulation.. and the some. Evironmental regulations, labor regulations, etc. Without these, corporations would have (and historically did have) even more power over people.
I suppose that explains why corporations rarely cross international boundaries. Oh wait, that isn't true.
Differing regional laws actually benefit corporations to a large degree. They allow a corporation to be based in one region where laws favor education and high levels of consumption, for example, and move labor/production to places with minimal environmental and labor standards. They get the best of both worlds.
Really, it isn't government that enables immense growth and control over the masses. It is technology. Mass media and instant global communication makes it trivial to spread beyond regional boundaries. Look at globalization. Look at offshoring of white collar jobs. Has nothing to do with legal protections. The government (in the form of trade regulations) gets in the way more than anything.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Shame he/she posted Anonymously even though the analogy isn't that that accurate since I am on the Global Warming theory side.
Slashdotters, this isn't 4chan; so don't worry about sounding dumb online.
Another day, another dullwitted conspiracy rant from kdawson.
Does he actually get paid for approving these "stories"? Please say no.
You are soooo 1950.
Deleted
Why does libertarianism have to be extreme while republicans and democrats get to straddle a wide range? Extreme libertarians are anarchists just like extreme republicans are neo-conservatives and extreme democrats are socialists.
Of course things break down in the extreme. All economic, social and political theories break down at the extreme.
It's just a different middle ground. If libertarians ever came to power, they might try to be extreme for a bit, but they'd end up complying with the realities of the world just like every other political party has done. They'd just end up at a different middle ground than those with republican or democratic sensibilities.
Cow Cube
Lately I've noticed that the hysteria about global warming and kyoto has reached an all time high. At fitst I had trouble understanding why, as it certainly wasn't out of concern for the environment. Then it hit me, the US has huge and massive coal reserves and there are a lot of orginisations, like OPEC, who are desperate to make sure we never make economical use of them. By some measures, I've herd that coal-gasification can be competitive at $35 per barrel and that there is enough coal to provide it for several 100 years.
Like most shams, the easiest way to understand that it's misleading is not to look at the pitch, but at the costs. In this case, massive curtailment of peoples property and liberties to ensure global warming is contained. History is filled with thousands of desperate scenarios where in order to stop disaster it was necissary for the masses to give up their liberties right away. Without exception, every single one of them were frauds. How's that for a statistic.
"Really, it isn't government that enables immense growth and control over the masses. It is technology".
An alternate theory: It is sorta government -- in the form of corporate personhood (esp. limited liability). The officers of a corporation are encouraged, via limited liability, to seek short-term rewards through grey (sometimes dark grey) ethical moves. If you could be personally bankrupted or put in jail for life b/c of illegal actions by corporations you held stock in, you'd probably step pretty cautiously into that water, and you'd probably take a longterm view of the meaning of "profit".
This, of course, would wreak havoc with the current capital finance markets, but I wonder if that's a bad thing...
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Please mod up
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Do a little research there Mr. Green. Most big L libertarians i know, belive that corporations as they exisit now should never have existed in the first place.
kind of sad that all it takes is a few economic buzzwords to get a +5 insightful mod rating. Basic market theory. Hardly insightful...
Now with more sodium!!
In response to a post about anthropogenic global warming, you brought up ADM. If you wanted to mention "corn ethanol is backed by an evil megacorp", it would have just been a non sequitur. If you didn't mention it in an attempt to discredit Al Gore, why did you bring it up? If you weren't trying to make ExxonMobil look less evil by bringing up a different megacorp and making them look more evil, what were you trying to do?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
The fact that governments do not create wealth strikes me as a truism. Like saying corporations do not secure the people's inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That's not their job.
Wouldn't the whole libertarian question come down to: How can rights be secured while destroying the smallest possible amount of wealth? i.e. the minarchist question.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
> Are you seriously suggesting that 2/3 smokers die from smoking?
Well, the only ones who don't die from smoking are those who are killed by something else first. Here, I'll let some doctors explain it to you. And that's just heart disease, they also have another article on stroke risk factors, etc.
Smoking may kill slowly, but long-term, it WILL kill you if something else doesn't kill you first. I've personally seen it happen enough times in my own family to erase any doubt.
"The only time businesses care about you is before you spend your money on their products and services. Never forget that."
Fixed for you. no charge.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
This is another logical fault of the environmental movement. *Who* makes claims or statements is not important. What *is* important is the claim or statement itself and whether it is demostrably true or not. This would be akin to automatically assuming that because a scientist is published in a peer-reviewed journal, whatever he or she is hypothesizing must have merit and/or be true.
http://myfuturesinfo.com/
You think that a vague desire to destroy the world muwahaha, which scientists have because they're, y'know, mad scientists, somehow secretly pervading the entire scientific establishment, is a more plausible source of bias than, y'know, simple short-sighted greed?
Also, I see that you've failed to come up with anything other than vigorous hand-waving to back up your claims. Did you bother to read the last paragraph of the post that you replied to?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
They're much more honest these days; if they say global warming isn't happening, we should believe them.
I hear they're also teaming up with the fast food industry on a new study we should be paying attention to; their team of crack scientists found that a diet high in salt and animal fat and low in vegetable fiber is actually quite nutritious!
You mean like the IPCC panel?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I'm half expecting these (tobacco and oil) to merge with Microsoft, RIAA and MPAA to form American Evil Empire Inc.
...that's mostly a European thing.
...do you hate America? (tm)
And, in some respects, right. But it elicits the question: if freely-flowing, self-legitimizing information is the result not the cause, of an ideally-free market, what is the cause. Given that the market is non-free at the present time, how can it ever become free? It sometimes seems to me that the pure laissez-faire approach requires that one believe 1) The market is presently free; or 2) The market will never be free (for if it is not free now, the "invisible hand" of free-market activity is not operative)
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
So you are saying that if you were to make something, you would not own it. You would not be able to exchange it for something else (like food), and anyone could take it from you without giving you anything for it. Hmmm, I think not.
I would suggest that if you were able to go back in time and try to take a flint from a caveman, you would get a spear in your gut. Try to take a kill from a pack of wolves, you should prepare for teeth, lots of nasty, pointy teeth.
The concept of property is as basic and as natural as anything gets.
Enforcing it is pretty basic and natural too. But since we have advanced a bit since our caveman days, we delegate that enforcement to government. We no longer even require cutting off a hand for stealing. Instead we merely insist on a timeout, in an institution with like minded people.
TANSTAAFL
Some years ago, the Partnership for a Drug-Free America got something like 15% of its funding from Philip Morris alone. Hypocrites. Glad to see they're branching out into propaganda about things that don't directly affect them (except I suppose that global warming will make it possible to grow more tobacco in Canada :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
You show your profound ignorance about the behavior of chaotic systems.
I may not be able to predict whether it will be raining seven days from now.
But I can predict something about the weather 10000 years in the future: It will be warmer on average in the summer than it is in the winter. This is based on the supposition that in 10000 years, locations undergoing summer will still receive more solar energy than locations undergoing winter.
The predictions that climate scientists are making are based on trends. Keep more heat in the system, and the climate will warm. Carbon dioxide is a gas that traps heat energy in our atmosphere. This is a fact. Carbon dioxide is increasing in concentration in our atmosphere. This is a fact. The climate is warming. This is a fact.
As for the economic question, I would ask you this: How does it benefit the economy when we waste energy? How does it benefit the economy when we live in houses that bleed energy to the outside? How does it benefit the economy when those who create our buildings ignore proven and viable technology that could improve energy efficiency by huge amounts (e.g. geothermal heat sinks, passive heating and cooling technologies)?
Please tell me, are you being paid to write these things? Because if you are not, perhaps you should be. In some ways, your message is quite well crafted, and links very nicely with the PR campaign being waged by the energy industry. If I were waging a publicity campaign against action on global warming, I think it would be very effective to hire a few dozen full time employees to post message to discussion boards like Slashdot. After all, these messages are read by tens or hundreds of thousands of people.
"The most common omission I find is the error level on charts. Take the ice core samples, what is the error level? Most I have seen have stated that the current PPM of CO2 is at an all time high! It has been stated that the current CO2 levels are 330+ ppm and from ice cores we know it has never been higher, or do we? What is the error level of the ice cores? +/- ??? If it is +/- 500ppm than the charts are junk, if it is +/- 2ppm then they may mean something. To date I have not been able to find anything that states the accuracy of the reading or the error level of the ice cores."
I did a quick Google search. The uncertainty in the Vostok ice core data is plus or minus 2-3 parts per million by volume.
Here's the data: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/antarctica/ vostok/vostok_co2.html
From the description:
"CO2 and CH4 measurements have been performed using the methods and analytical procedures previously described (Barnola et al., 1987, Chappellaz et al, 1990). However, the CO2 measuring system has been slightly modified in order to increase the sensitivity of the CO2 detection. The thermal conductivity chromatographic detector has been replaced by a flame ionisation detector which measures CO2 after its transformation into CH4. The overall accuracy for CH4 and CO2 measurements are ± 20 ppbv and 2-3 ppmv respectively. No gravitational correction has been applied."
If anyone wants to see what the Vostok ice core data looks like, here's an open letter I sent to the Canadian environment minister, including a graph of the ice core data: http://www.geocities.com/rwvong/future/greenhouse. html
You may not be too worried about a CO2 level of 370 ppm, but it's still rising. If we proceed with business as usual, by 2100 it'll be at 800 ppm. (Again, looking at the ice core data, it's never been higher than 300 ppm at any time in the previous 400,000 years, which includes several ice ages. In comparison, settled civilization based on agriculture is less than 10,000 years old.)
If we make a serious effort to stabilize and reduce CO2 emissions in the next ten years--if the EU countries can do it, why can't we?--then we should be able to stabilize CO2 levels at about 500 ppm. There'll still be warming, but it'll be slow enough to adapt.
Huh? Libertarianism doesn't rely on corporations even existing. Limited liability is just a government-enforced way to keep accountability from happening. Does using government force to prevent people from facing the consequence of their mistakes, sound like heartless libertarianism? ;-)
Incorporation could perhaps somehow be made compatible with libertarianism, but there would be a lot of tit-for-tat to work out.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
We have had enough convincing evidence that we have a major climate problem but the global population (if in fact the individuals are doing anything at all)is still in the debating stage. Maybe we will stay in this stage until it is too late. It seems like it. It's like sleeping through a crisis and the sleeping pills administered to keep us in that state are the snippets of disinformation put out by the various vested interests.
"Indeed, and that reason is mostly to do with the rule of law and a well regulated market, which is not much like the "free market" libertarians defend. Nations with better-regulated markets than the U.S., like Canada, Denmark and Sweden to name but a few, have populaces that live better than people in the USA do. At least according the UN measure of quality of life."
First of all, I would never depend on the UN to determine my quality of life. Secondly, the most progressive socialist governments of the "first world" have ailing economies such as Germany. Third, a careful study of the economics of this country would show that wealth in this country has been slowly transferred to the political and corporate elite. The value of the dollar has decreased 98% since our "regulated" fiat currency was introduced with the federal reserve (another wealth transference cartel). It is only a matter of time before all the catches up with us and the whole thing collapses.
Mises and Rothbard have meticulously provided evidence and solid arguments for why this system will not work in the long run. Our tech bubble and real estate bubbles were prime examples of the fraud of fractional reserve banking and a centralized banking system. Every single empire debased it's currency before it's eventual collapse and this time will be no different.
The Austrian economists were evidently the only ones to predict the downfall of communism. Their predictions of Socialism's failure were and will be right on money as well.
I would posit that financial success in the US is in spite of government and not because of it. Our current system is a recipie for disaster.
Note that I'm not criticising libertarianism here, I'm criticising libertarian propaganda.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
who would benefit by finding evidence for global warming. Let's assume the government is neutral, and really interested in the truth. (I know, this is considered quite a stretch by the majority here, but follow me o this one if you will.) If the study finds no evidence, funding dries up. If the study finds evidence or is non-conclusive, funding for further studies looking for clarifications, causes and further explanation is available. So, if I am a professional researcher, it is in my best interest to conduct the studies in such a way that I have continued work. I know this isn't scientifically ethical, and it isn't how I work, but I can't vouch for the ethics of others, so it is a possibility.
Your freedom to pollute your environment stops where it affects someone's freedom to enjoy clean air.
So aside from a smoker's private lodgins, no place should be likely to have cigarette smoke. Fortunatly, fresh new laws make sure of that.
You can't take the sky from me...
Big tobacco will be despised no matter what they do, so they are free to fund the contrarian view on global warming. Most large corporations aren't.
"Chuck Fuqua" - I wonder how he pronounces his surname?!
If we humans were perfect, any system would work perfectly, even a monarchy or tirany.
I dont think anyone but americans deny global-warming and second-hand smoking. I think its an american thing to believe in such bullshits.
Disclaimer: What I'm about to say may not apply to you specifically. Indeed, it probably doesn't.
One of the things about the more fundamentalist forms of libertarianism is that they require that there is no such thing as a commons. If it is true that human industry is responsible for global warming, and that global warming is going to do bad things to the planet, then the atmosphere is a commons. It does the nation of Kiribati no good to sue each car owner individually when their country is underwater.
In fact, the Kyoto protocol solves the problem in a way that libertarians should, in theory, love: It turns the right to pollute into a property right. Entities can then sell their pollution rights if they don't need them.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Why do corporations require government? They can be powerful enough to establish their own armies and police forces. On the other hand, the concept of individual ownership DOES require government, because most individuals don't have the power to enforce their own security and right to property, without a government/police force to do it for them. One would have to be obscenely wealthy to enforce one's property rights without government intervention.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Phillip Morris is part of the same conglomerate that also produces Teddy Grahams, Kool-Aid, Cheez Whiz, Fig Newtons, and a lot of other stuff. It's a big company, in the same general category as AOL Time Warner. Does the article give any reasoning or evidence to the effect that this lobbying was funded for reasons having to do with the tobacco-related portion of their business, or explain what global warming might have to do with tobacco?
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Well, what is it made from? Wood? Who gave you ownership rights of tree? metal? Who gave you mining rights? etc.
You would not be able to exchange it for something else (like food), and anyone could take it from you without giving you anything for it. Hmmm, I think not.
I never argued any of that. I simply questioned the idea of libertarianism being about liberty. Of course, you can do all of those things, but without government, things tend to get pretty hairy - and people can come along and take stuff. If libertarianism WAS about liberty, then it stands to reason that anyone could come along and take stuff you "own" - because there would be no laws to interfere with your liberty. But libertarians disagree with this notion. So, what is Libertarianism really all about?
I would suggest that if you were able to go back in time and try to take a flint from a caveman, you would get a spear in your gut. Try to take a kill from a pack of wolves, you should prepare for teeth, lots of nasty, pointy teeth
Right - and all of those things are much more of an infringement on liberty than the lack of an "ownership" right. Being killed is the ultimate loss of liberty. Also, it seems by this logic, that it is OK for strong guys with guns to take stuff from weak nerds.
But since we have advanced a bit since our caveman days, we delegate that enforcement to government.
And libertarianism is opposed to that. So, people's liberty will be eroded, as the strong and powerful do whatever they like without punishment.
... and then they built the supercollider.
I'm not sure I understand what you are trying to say. I'm going to disagree with what you have said, because you started with a refutation, but it's quite possible that I completely missed your point. Are you disagreeing with the definition that liberty is freedom from oppression? That's quite well founded, as I stated it.
The definition of "liberty" I used is from a Oxford dictionary: "the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behavior, or political views", or as I shortened it (hoping to make the point without oversimplifying) "free from oppression". Black's Law Dictionary accords, "freedom from arbitrary or undue external restraint", and as the courts interpret it, "[Liberty] denotes not merely the freedom from bodily restraint but also the right of the individual to contract, to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home and bring up children, to worship God
Clearly, liberty in the common dictionary, pseudo-legal, and common law directly and unequivocally includes the pursuit of property and proprietary interests. Liberty includes the right to exclusively enjoy those things to which you have a proprietary interest (property right), by definition. Preventing the exclusive enjoyment of property is an oppression of that right, and concurrently a limitation on your liberty.
Are you saying Libertarians advocate society without property? That would also be incorrect. Property is intrinsic to Libertarianism - without property, what could you possibly want to protect from state interference? Libertarians are definitely not advocating primitive communism. Property rights are intrinsic to Libertarianism, by definition.
Are you hinting at society without proprietary interests? That would not be libertarianism, per se, but Libertarian Socialism, which advocates not the abolition of personal property, but the abolition of private property. Proprietary personal interests remain, and are inherent to the philosophy, but there is a limitation on "tyrannical" proprietary interests (my interpretation, but it's savvy). In any event, liberty is the right to enjoy your property, though the definition of that property may be limited. Other than those, I am not quite sure what point you are trying to make. In any event, in the accepted sensees, liberty and property go hand in hand, by definition, and are not as the grandparent suggested, mutually exclusive, by any stretch of the imagination.
I know nothing about Libertarian propaganda, so I can't really comment on that. But I am sure the semantics of the phrases I used were in line with the commonly accepted definitions.
That's a rather idealistic hope. It'ws pretty unrealistic, as that kind of thing doesn't happen very often. In the time that it takes to happen, those in power could abuse the situation. not to mention that in a Libertarian world, those powers could easily shut that person up or kill them, etc.
Your Michael Dell example is very curious, as Dell basically rode on the backs of what came before, and has definite interests in protecting the industry overall. And he uses the same components as everybody else.
Er...have you actually worked for a company in a competitive industry, or been in business at all, or are you just speaking from pure theory?
Sure I have. And it's frustrating, because usually the innovative lose to the established oligarchies. Just look at Microsoft. There have been many better ways of making an OS, but somehow Microsoft still sells junk to 95% of the computing world. Why hasn't an innovative competitor been able to unseat MS yet?
Their sales forces disparage each other all the time. They watch jealously to see if the other guys have some minute advantage and quickly try to copy it or neutralize it or slander it as quickly as possible.
That's usually pretty superficial. If something came up that threatened a fundamental foundation of the entire industry - they would be sure to band together against the threat. What computer companies fear most is people not buying computers at all. That is more scary than some people choosing a competitor's computer, because there's always a way to win them back. If some kind of super-alternative arose, those companies would quickly work together to launch a FUD campaign against the computer alternative.
Look, if it were that natural for people to just all go along and do what's best for the group, we wouldn't be having a big discussion about global warming, would we?
No, this is exactly why there is atill "debate" about global warming. The established industry have invested themselves in "dirty" technology and wasteful practices. So, they band together to keep making money from them. So, even though there are many more individual humans, the corporations have more power - and those powerful people banding together have managed to stifle solutions and spread disinformation. That's why there is a fuss over global warming.
... and then they built the supercollider.
The problem with that philosophy is that we are evolved to be social tribal animals with tribal leaders. Most people don't want to go to the "trouble" that you've mentioned needed to maintain such a society. They are perfectly willing to give up a little independence for safety in numbers under a leader. And those who become leaders in even small conflicts, such as in the scenario you have described of the anarchists vs. capitalists, rarely choose to give up that power. Maybe you've heard that it corrupts? Indeed, in any population, there a number who desire such power and will use any means available, including setting up such conflicts, so that they can can gain power.
Libertarianism, like communism, is a utopic philosophy that fundamentally ignores the human nature that is the product of millions of years of natural selection. Until we fully understand the brain and endocrine system and can change that nature and the instincts that underlie it, libertarianism will remain unfeasable. Once we change that, we will no longer still be human and the new animal may be better, or a lot worse, like Morlocks and Eloi.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Really? Which scientists? The AP did a survey of climatologists; all those who had seen the movie confirmed its accuracy. But perhaps you think Senator James Inhofe is a better scientist. Or that Richard Linzen's $2500 a day he charges fossil fuel companies makes him an unbiased source.
Or perhaps you're just clapping as loud as you can and hoping that proves your claims.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Unless of course, you aren't refering to the law. If you are refering to some inaliable right to smoke that goes beyond the law, let me assure you, you don't have it. Certainly not in this society. You have as much right to smoke where you want as I have the right to run you over with my car.
Ahh yes. The ol' "he who is without sin shall cast the first stone" argument.
The fact is, you don't need to follow your own advice to make the advice valid. I find that argument is most commonly used when someone doesn't want to face up to sensible reasoning, and would much prefer to shoot it down, desipte having no convincing arguments to the contrary.
As a matter of fact, I'm 22 now, and I've completely abstained from alchohol, cigarettes, and illegal drugs my entire life (I swear this is 100% true). I hate them, I hate the culture they breed, I hate the companies they breed, I hate their effects on other people. I'm fully supportive of weaning society off cigarettes. I am without sin, and I cast the first stone.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Carbon going into the air from tobacco smoke is actually carbon taken from the air in the first place (for the most part). That pales in comparison to carbon taken from deep underground isolation and releasing it into the atmosphere. The latter substantially increases the carbon load (generally in the form of carbon dioxide), while the former does not.
Similarly, burning wood to heat your home in the winter is just circulating the carbon load, whereas burning coal, gas, or petroleum products is releasing new carbon load into the air. This does differ from the above in that the tree you kill and burn might have been around for decades, holding that carbon from the atmosphere. But as soon as a replacement tree can grow to the original size, the carbon is then back out of the atmosphere. So in the long term it is just a cycle.
See: Carbon Cycle
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Don't Smoke! The fire causes global warming!
Why does libertarianism have to be extreme while republicans and democrats get to straddle a wide range?
Libertarianism is by definition extreme. One of the most fundamental concepts of libertarianism is the notion of an unfettered free market. On the spectrum of economic systems, such a notion is just as extreme as true communism.
And FYI, extreme Democrat != socialist. On most issues, I consider myself a pretty extreme democrat, but I am not a socialist. I support some sort of national health care system, and a strong social safety net, but I am a small business owner and capitalist. Some extreme Democrats are socialists, but, despite the right-wing propaganda to the contrary, it's a gross exaggeration to suggest that we all are. Unlike Libertarians, Democrats don't have a single pet economic system-- Our views pretty much run the gamut. The main difference is that we are not opposed to some government regulation, and we don't mind paying our fair share of taxes (we don't like it any more then we do, but we see it as a necessary evil). Oh, and not all Arachists are Libertarians, either.
a) What does libertarianism rely on? It doesn't rely on anything, it only says that people should be free. Facts are on their side, as the freer America we had had more upward mobility chances for working people, had less crime, had more economic growth.
b) Why should it rely on perfect human beings. I've never before read such BS. While Statism (i.e. a strong government, as advocated by leftists and right-wing nuts, yes, Dems and Reps) doesn't work with a few bad people (because those bad people will strive for power most of all), libertarianism works as long as some people are good.
Maybe your "Libertarians" just didn't get it really... Nobody ever said you should trust all businesses. If you don't even trust *competing* businesses, why do you trust a centralist organisation run by Those In Power (and their friends, the Fortune 500 CEOs)???
By the way, the modern corporation is a product of state intervention, just like The Cubicle. A free market would have many more smaller businesses.
Right, yeah.
Communism needs everybody to work for the *common good*. Ever heard of the tragedy of the commons? Communism doesn't work, because humans are selfish.
Libertarianism is the *opposite*. We don't not starve because there is regulation. We don't starve because there is a profit to be made in selling food. Libertarianism works, because people are selfish and will maximise *long-term* profit (unlike our modern state-influenced Corporatism, which focuses on short-term gains only).
Who said that liberty needs people that are "other than they are??" Maybe you have an example. And don't give me that crap that we need intervention to have "perfect competition" (stupid textbook concept to begin with) or something like that.
To quote the opposite
And no I am not challenging you
Politicians and Pedophiles: Two groups of exploitive bastards who are most dangerous when they're thinking of children.
Nice. So you define libertarianism as absolutely extreme, thus leaving no place for those of use who want less government but do not want more social laws (Republicans) and do not want more fiscal laws (Democrats).
It's easy to define viewpoints you disagree with to just be extreme. Some of my friends are Democrats who say that sort of thing about Republicans without realizing that they are pretty extreme themselves. The same goes for a few Republicans I know.
Now that I think about it, I realize that you're just a troll. I apologize to the slashdot community for feeding you.
Cow Cube
Does that continue to be true as the quality of information contines to degrade, I wonder?
For instance, if a cartel can control the disemmination of information to the extent that potential buyers are only aware of one product, the model becomes fuctionally identical to a monopoly. In such a case there's no difference between buying the only product you think exists, and a situation like Soviet Russia where you buy the only product the State allows to be sold.
Of course, the problem dosen't occur with something like potatoes, where anyone can theoretically grow their own, and where word of mouth is a workable commincation channel across the area of potential distribution. The problem comes with higher order products and services. Perhaps libertarianism just doesn't scale well?
In any case, I think the questions to be asking are how far can the quality of information degrade before a free market aproach ceases to have any benefit, and how quickly do those advantages degrade as information qualty drops below theoretical perfection. Then we'll be in a postion of being able to answer the GPs question as to whether libertairianism is practical in the real world, or whether like communisim, it's a nice idea, but always ends up drowing in corruption and protectionism.
How did we get off on this tangent anyway? Mod me offtopic by all means...
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Well, you might have a point about communism. But no one mentioned communism, so why are you bringing it up?
How about a well-regulated capitalism? Many countries do well with some amount of regulation while remaining well short of being a totalitiarian state.
Maybe Al Gore should distribute his new film for free over the P2P network - I mean, he wants to be Green and Hip right? What better way to SPREAD THE WORD then give the thing away over the net? Should help counter the commercial spin anyway.
Don't call us, we can see you!
Er, I just think you need to be careful not to get ahead of yourself. Make sure that whatever comparison you're making is a fair, "apples-to-apples" comparison. That is, don't say, "in theory, communism works like [Garden of Eden], but look at these *practical* examples of capitalist failure". (That wasn't what you were doing here of course.) There, the problem is you need to compare theory to theory and practice to practice.
The problem of incomplete information for actors occurs in all economic systems, and its existence in one is not an indictment of that system. Libertarians for one don't claim that libertarian outcomes have some metaphysical superiority, just that they can't predictably be improved upon. You might be able to say, "well, obviously, obviously, in this particular instance, this particular set of market actors lacked this information, so if government just levied this eensy weensy tax and funded a campaign to tell them that information, that would yield a far superior outcome." But you would have to establish that the set of policies that led it to do that, if followed consistently, would improve over the broader society, not just that one case where the conclusion was more obvious.
Likewise, even if a potato information cartel could form, and important information about potatoes were somehow suppressed, that would at most mean that, as you said, with respect to potato information, the economy has become little more than communism, but would still be much better in all other goods.
Many objections to libertarian stem from these kinds of loaded comparisons. Yes, markets don't work as well as they could, the harder it is for information to get out. But unless some other economy manages that uncertainty, and those "search costs" better, it's not a strike against libertarianism.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
You are totally correct in your observation. People are stupid sheep.
Meh.
Why does libertarianism have to be extreme while republicans and democrats get to straddle a wide range?
First, remember all my statements are in terms of economics. Libertarians don't have to be extreme. The Libertarian party does not have to be extreme. Libertarianism the concept, as it is generally defined, however, is an economic extreme.
It's just a different middle ground. If libertarians ever came to power, they might try to be extreme for a bit, but they'd end up complying with the realities of the world just like every other political party has done. They'd just end up at a different middle ground than those with republican or democratic sensibilities.
This is probably true. I support the Libertarian party platform, perhaps more than the Republican or Democratic party platforms. I have issues with all of them. I actually favor the Libertarians as much for their inherent support for electoral reform and breaking the two party system as much as anything. But this was not a discussion of why one should or should not vote Libertarian, only why, in theory, their economic platform won't work and is actually a move an already extreme economy, even more towards that extremism.
From TFA: "... limits on human carbon dioxide generation".
I suggest amending the Kyoto accord to limit exhalations by 30%.
And FYI, extreme Democrat != socialist. On most issues, I consider myself a pretty extreme democrat, but I am not a socialist. I support some sort of national health care system, and a strong social safety net, but I am a small business owner and capitalist.
It is interesting how negative connotations attached to words can cause people to try to redefine them. For example, you claim adamantly to not be a socialist, and then describe several socialist programs you support. Socialism is simply society as a whole contributing to provide some level of support to all of society. Socialized heath care is socialism. Public schools are socialism. Libraries are socialism. Police forces are socialism. Subsidized housing is socialism. Almost all charities are privately funded socialism.
Socialism is an inherent part of human nature, for the whole society to help its members out. Everyone is a socialist to some degree, it is just a matter of how much socialism and what types an individual supports. Libertarianism has, as a common principal, no government involvement in socialism (resulting in drastically reduced socialism). In a country like the US, which already has less socialism than most industrialized nations and which most economists agree is has lower standards of living and greater crime as a result of that, this is an extreme economic position to take.
Now I don't want to start a discussion of political parties stated platforms and functional platforms, but the Democratic party both in principal and in action does support socialism... they just go to great pains to never call it that for PR reasons. The Republican party also supports socialism, albeit different programs and likewise avoids calling it that. I caution you, don't confuse political posturing for reality and public relations with science. It is very easy in these days of mass misinformation campaigns.
I just have a libertarian streak and I deeply question it nowadays. Here and in a couple other places in this thread the question is not over the actual existence of a perfectly free market but the theoretical tenability of the Libertarian principle in light of a very important fact
Whatever happened up to now, the market is not presently free. There are established power centers, and they are using their power to make the market less-free whenever they can. As you said, they are stacking the deck so that resources do not accrue to them efficiently, based on the value they provide. Either
These power centers arose from a free market and are permanent, in which case I think libertarians have some explaining to do about how a once-free market could possibly "fail" in this way.
Or
These power centers are a fluctuation, and will be "corrected" away by market forces. Obviously, the problem is that market forces are not operative; as per the first point, the market is not presently free, so it is actually embedded/inherited power that is operative. So the correction may come (from some non-market-driven direction) or it may not.
Most of the less-analytical libertarians I've encountered fall back on a position like "well, the embedded power centers are not illegitimate; they acquired their wealth & power in "the market", even if you don't like the means by which they did it."
For that to be tenable it seems like one would need a historical moment to point to and say "the market was free right there and whatever arose out of that is fair game". I don't know that anyone has done that...
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
If we humans were perfect, we'd be able to spell tyranny, too...
If I drink next to you, you might get second-hand drinks in your stomach.
Suppose I'm drunk enough to passionately kiss you. Suppose I vomit.
Communism needs everybody to work for the *common good*. Ever heard of the tragedy of the commons? Communism doesn't work, because humans are selfish.
This is a really amusing statement when you understand what communism is. Communism does work, because humans are not purely selfish and because they rationally understand the benefits of sharing resources. Communism does not work for very large communist cells. It works great for smaller and medium communist cells. To claim it does not work is to ignore the most common communist cell, the atomic family. I'd argue that it also scales fairly well to larger sizes, with communities or communes of a few dozen people and has worked well in some cases for communes of hundreds of people.
Libertarianism is the *opposite*. We don't not starve because there is regulation. We don't starve because there is a profit to be made in selling food. Libertarianism works, because people are selfish and will maximise *long-term* profit (unlike our modern state-influenced Corporatism, which focuses on short-term gains only).
Actually, Libertarianism and Communism are not polar opposites. Rather, every economy is made up of communist cells, participating in a capitalist system, and with some amount of socialism evening out the richest and poorest. Most libertarians are in favor of communism being maintained at its current level in the US, and not for it to increase to entire communities nor decrease to each family member buying all their own food, shelter, electricity, etc. What Libertarians do favor, is eliminating government involvement in socialism, which most likely will result in greatly decreased socialism. The problem with this is historically, it has not worked. Whenever a economy has tried to move away from a balance of these three elements, it has failed. Moving to even less socialist programs, in the US, which already has less socialism than the average industrialized nation will lead to an extreme and will collapse. Due to the monetary condensation principal that is a given for any real economist, lack of socialism eventually leads to a strictly defined upper an lower class and the elimination of the middle class. This lends itself to authoritarian abuses, concentrated power, and a violent rebellion exactly the same way extremely large communist cell sizes does.
Who said that liberty needs people that are "other than they are??" Maybe you have an example. And don't give me that crap that we need intervention to have "perfect competition" (stupid textbook concept to begin with) or something like that.
Capitalism brings the advantages of competition, motivation and drives innovation, while bringing the disadvantages of wasted, duplicated resources. Unregulated capitalism, leads to monopolies, oligopolies, and concentration of power that eventually removes all of those benefits. It has nothing to do with people not being "perfect" only in moving away from the balance that evolved to work with existing human nature. No "pure" capitalism has ever survived more than a short time without violent upheaval and forced redistribution of wealth (usually at spear point).
Now I support a lot of what the Libertarian party represents and I think a smaller government, with less intervention in many ways and the electoral reforms needed to break the two party system. I often vote Libertarian, in fact. I do not, however, believe their economic ideas to eliminate government socialism are a good idea nor do statistical studies of relative levels of socialism in other countries support decreasing it. In fact, most studies show that increasing socialism and particularly inheritance tax will likely provide significant reductions to violent crime in the US and increase the standard of living. Our current system, where the circumstances of birth are more important to financial success than intelligence, hard work, or any other factor is unfair, and that unfairness leads to a lot of social problems including government corruption and unnecessary expansion. I urge you to really look at economic systems around the world both now and from history and objectively evaluate what is most likely to solve our problems.
Facts are on their side, as the freer America we had had more upward mobility chances for working people, had less crime, had more economic growth.
Perhaps you should review your "facts." upward mobility, and reduced crime both correlate with increased socialism, not decreased. Libertarianism generally prescribes removing government funded socialism, which results in a decrease in socialism in general. The US is already dangerously less socialist than most industrialized nations and most probably has higher crime and less upward mobility as a result. Further reducing socialism in the US would push our economy into a dangerously extreme position that historically has lead to strictly defined upper and lower classes, no upward mobility, concentrated power into fewer hands, authoritarianism, and forced redistribution of wealth via violence.
You see, without socialism, money consolidates into fewer and fewer hands, because having money to start with is more important for getting more, than working hard or being smart. If I invent a cool new invention and make a million, I've also made 100 million for investors who did nothing but inherit money to start with. In short order, almost all the money is in few hands and those people use it to influence the government and foster corruption and class differences. People feel angry at the unfairness, and simply their position in life and they are faced with desperate situations when a few have a dozen huge mansions and most have very little except perpetual debt, so they redress the difference by turning to crime.
Sorry, but those are the facts of life and the Libertarian platform (for all its good ideas) is dangerously wrong when it comes to this one.
Why should it rely on perfect human beings.
Perfect human beings is a wholly relative term. Libertarianism does, however, rely upon certain ideas that simply do not seem to be true when tested.
If you don't even trust *competing* businesses, why do you trust a centralist organisation run by Those In Power (and their friends, the Fortune 500 CEOs)???
Governments need to be transparent and answerable to the people so there is no trust involved. The problem is, reduced socialism will almost certainly lead to concentration of wealth which is a concentration of power and that money will be used to corrupt the government if it consolidates. Socialism is, by definition, a mechanism for countering that consolidation of wealth. Simply imposing an 80% inheritance tax for estates greater than 1 million dollars, like some Scandinavian countries have, will do more to counter government corruption and increase upward mobility than anything I've seen the Libertarian party propose. The problem is, the people who write our laws are almost 100% those that inherited millions this way and want to continue a legacy of birthrights, rather than equality.
By the way, the modern corporation is a product of state intervention, just like The Cubicle. A free market would have many more smaller businesses.
If you could change our economy into a bunch of unregulated, small businesses tomorrow, they would begin consolidating in a week and in two generations we'd be facing a handful of huge monopolies and oligopolies, providing none of the upward mobility you desire. Monopolies are the natural result of an unregulated capitalist market and at that point differ very little from any other form of authoritarian, centralized power.
There is a spectrum of economic systems that run the gamut from the extremes of true capitalism to true communism (I'm not an economist. Some people might find fault with this statement, but it's reasonably accurate even if there are exceptions or caveats). Most economic systems fall somewhere in between. On of the most core concepts of Libertarianism is that of an unrestrained free market. You may condsider yourself a Libertarian, and that's fine, but you are disagreeing with one of the core principles. That's fine-- there are pro-choice republicans and pro-life Democrats for example-- but Libertarianism is still by definition extreme, you just happen to be redefining it.
I'd find that convincing if you could be a dear and dig up something analogous to the campaign of subversion, FUD and disinformation spread by ExxonMobil. Care to point out the millions upon millions of dollars funnelled to think tanks? The administration sticking its fingers into scientific reports (as it did with the 2003 EPA Report on the Environment) for political reasons favoring those well-connected mustache-twirling climatologists you've conveniently handwaved into existence? Stating your own fevered dreams as if they were fact doesn't make them so.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
You criticize me for redefining Socialism, then you take the most liberal possible definition of Socialism and try to make your point. Few but the most hardcore objectivists & anarchists would argue for the complete elimination of the police, so by your definition probably 99.9% of Americans are Socialists. Most people understand that the term Socialism has a fairly specific definition in political discussions.
By that commonly used definition, I am not a socialist. I do support strong programs to help the Homeless (preferably before they become homeless), strong worker retraining programs, universal healthcare, and some similar ideas, under the notion that it's cheaper and better for society to address these issues before they become very expensive problems later. That said, I do agree that there should be reasonable limits on social programs, and I agree with some of the Republican complaints about the welfare system as it has been implemented in the past. I can agree with your statement "the Democratic party both in principal and in action does support socialism" with one strong caveat: We support elements of socialism, but we are not defined by socialism. By your definition, Libertarians would also be Republicans just because they both support lower taxes. Such a view is obviously a gross oversimplification, and the sort of nitpicking that serves only to distract without actually achieving any useful purpose in a political discussion.
To give you perspective, I define myself as a civil libertarian. I agree with most Libertarians on social issues, but I disagreee with the notion of an unfettered free market. I can certainly agree that the implementation of many of our current regulatory agencies is extremely flawed, but I've seen to many examples of corporate Americas short-sightedness to believe that as a society we'd be better off with no government regulation. As someone pointed out earlier, Libertarianism only works when people actually think about their long-term good, and I've seen no evidence that people can do so.
You criticize me for redefining Socialism, then you take the most liberal possible definition of Socialism and try to make your point.
There are Socialist parties in numerous countries, with differing beliefs in many of them. Just as I would not define a Republican as a person who supports having a representative republic, I would not define a member of a socialist party as someone who supports socialism. Socialism, however has a clearly defined meaning in most of the world and it is very much as I defined it. Just because the term socialism has negative connotations in the US, who published all sorts of weird, negative propaganda about the terms "socialism" and "communism" doe not negate those meanings. Socialized health care is socialism. Socialized schools are socialism. Supporting them is supporting socialism. That does not imply that a person wants increased socialism, or a particular kind of socialism, or extreme amounts of socialism, but it does make them a supporter of socialism as a concept.
Most people understand that the term Socialism has a fairly specific definition in political discussions.
This is true, but not the way you think. Most people consider socialism to be support for some socialist policy. In the US, I'd argue that socialism does not have a well defined meaning but is instead a "scare" word people use to label their opponents as "bad" in an undefined way since all sane people support socialism in some form.
By your definition, Libertarians would also be Republicans just because they both support lower taxes.
This is a non sequitur. Socialism is a concept and an economic element, just like capitalism. A republican might be (and probably is) a socialist and a capitalist, supporting both elements of the economy. A Libertarian might be a capitalist and a communist, supporting both of these aspects of the economy. That does not make a Libertarian a republican because they both support capitalism.
As someone pointed out earlier, Libertarianism only works when people actually think about their long-term good, and I've seen no evidence that people can do so.
I agree that Libertarian economic policies do not work in the long term, but not because of an individual's lack of foresight. They don't work because without any socialism, wage disparity and wealth consolidation rise dramatically until there is no middle class. At this point money and power have consolidated and human nature indicates it will be used to influence the government. History has shown us the poor whose wealth has been consolidated away will be left with fewer rights and perpetual debt and they will eventually take violent action to redistribute the wealth. The consolidation of power when socialism is removed from our economy is no different than the consolidation of power when a hardline communist country increases the communist cell size so much that it basically eliminates capitalism from the economy. They both have the same result.
I think what you are missing is that socialism, communism, and capitalism are elements of the economy, while Republican, Democrat, and Libertarian are political parties. This does not mean there cannot be a "socialist" party, "communist" party or a "capitalist" party, but those are independent of their meanings within the economy.
On the other hand, you'd probaby find things like a belief that knowledge is good, that citizens should be equal under the law, that slavery is evil, and that citizens should be free to practice their religion as long as that practice doesn't infringe on the rights of others.
So it really depends on what you mean by Western Civilization. What did you mean?
Which, if you've been paying attention, was the whole purpose of the disinformation campaign. If scientific truth is decided by whoever can hire the better sockpuppet with a doctorate, the concept becomes meaningless.
Could you provide some examples of what you mean by scientists being on the wrong side of history? I generally think of science as having done pretty well for people (electriciy, medicine, sanitation, the internet, that sort of thing), so I'm having trouble seeing where you're coming from.
Are you... calling me a commie?
Apart from that, you'll find that most social justice struggles that we consider a done deal today (women should be able to own property, black people should be able to vote) were heavily supported in their day by liberals, progressives and yes, Communists. They may have been supporting monstrously murderous regimes on the opposite hemisphere, but if you're going to start tarring every movement supported by Communists over the last fifty years, you're going to look mighty strange.
That said, I still don't see how that would make a difference, even if you had backed up your claim with evidence. (I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here.) Linus Pauling had wacky ideas about Vitamin C later in life. We're not all megadosing on Vitamin C, despite Pauling winning that Nobel Prize. William Shockley may have invented the transistor, but that didn't make his racism fly in the scientific community.
Finally, an actual claim. The scientific press never claimed an impending catastrophic ice age. The popular press did. The scientific consensus, then, was that more research was needed. The scientific consensus, now, is that anthropogenic global warming requires public policy changes. The current situation, the current consensus, is without precedent.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Your definition of 'liberty' does not include a starving man taking food from a billionaire.
I didn't define "liberty", I defined "libertarian". Nice try with the straw man there, though.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
>Please tell me, are you being paid to write these things? Because if you are not, perhaps you should be. In some ways, your message >is quite well crafted, and links very nicely with the PR campaign being waged by the energy industry. If I were waging a publicity >campaign against action on global warming, I think it would be very effective to hire a few dozen full time employees to post >message to discussion boards like Slashdot. After all, these messages are read by tens or hundreds of thousands of people.
I am flattered in a way. But I am more deeply saddened by the paranoia in here. No, I am not payed.
Anssi Porttikivi / app@iki.fi
Libertarianism (in this case anarchism, rather than an-cap) is not a utopian philosophy, it's a realistic philosophy based on both theory and example. It's designed to be merely the system that provides the most objective freedom for individuals.
Anarchists don't pretend there's any magic to defending yourself from would-be rulers, it's solely a matter of vigilance and education. People under statist societies have a tendency to give up freedom when they're scared, but remember that they're also educated inside a system where they're taught to love and respect their government, and taught to fear only foreign rulers. Freedom is spoken of either in the abstract, or as something that some leaders gave to you long ago. This is necessary, because a desire for freedom is harmful to the state's ability to rule. The opposite of anarchism is fatalism, and the state loves it.
There are examples of anarchist societies that work. The best-known modern example was built by the CEI & FNT, during the Spanish Revolution. There an anarchist society was formed under the worst possible conditions, and yet achieved more of a classless, stateless society than has ever been seen in a modernised nation. In the 2-3 years before the Fascists (supported by Italy and Germany) defeated the anti-fascist coalition (supported hardly at all by anyone, though the Russians gave some support to the communist faction -- fat lot of good that did for the anarchists and republicans) the anarchists not only got production in agriculture and industry restarted, they increased production over prewar levels. They built factories and hospitals; they developed novel methods of distribution and organization; they mounted a large-scale decentralized war effort that was quite impressive considering the size and caliber of their fascist enemies.
They proved that huge swaths of anarchist philosophy actaully is true in the real world. E.g., if you take the farms that belonged to wealthy landlords on a hill, and gave them to the slave-wage peasants that actually worked them (easier to do if the landlord fled when the fascist coup started) you find that the land starts producing more, since the peasants suddenly give a crap about the quality of the crop.
There were object lessons about threats to an anarchist society as well -- the representative of the anarchists, Durruti, spent so much time hobnobbing with the republicans and communists that he started acting more and more like them, issuing 'orders' from on high, and telling people to compromise, and be reasonable, and wait, and not to try for a full-scale anarchist revolution just yet. (Not that most listened to him. Giving orders to anarchists is like herding cats.) He also insisted on moving towards a conventional method of war, whereas the anarchists tended to be best at a guerilla style. (And looking back, it seems obvious you weren't going to beat that army with conventional tactics, not when Adolf Hitler was treating it as a Versailles-loophole -- i.e. a testing ground for his new blitzkrieg weapons and a training ground for his soon-to-be frontline troops.)
Most other examples of working anarchist societies are pre-industrial. You've got some of the Native American tribes -- when the U.S. government wanted a treaty to take away some land, oftentimes they had to just pick some guy and say "Okay, you're the chief now, everyone does what you say. Sign here." You've got the Amish. You've got various other native tribes and cultural groups that don't respect authority.
Authority has had a few thousand years to tell you that you can't escape it. That makes it pretty easy to believe it, but it doesn't make it true.
She tasted like ashes and fire.
Which was pretty hot at the time, but I guess it'd annoy me if it was always like that.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
There is a spectrum of economic systems that run the gamut from the extremes of true capitalism to true communism (I'm not an economist. Some people might find fault with this statement, but it's reasonably accurate even if there are exceptions or caveats). Most economic systems fall somewhere in between.
I think you're mistaken in thinking communism and capitalism are polar opposites. In truth, socialism is closer to an opposite to capitalism, than communism is. As for economic systems, all working economic systems are a bunch of individuals and/or communist cells competing in a capitalist economy, while everyone contributes some to socialist programs. In the US most communist cells are family units or extended families, with a few communes and monasteries. These compete in a capitalist economy, while taxes are collected by the central government on spent on socialist programs like public schools, military, police, roads, etc.
We have smaller communist cells than average and less socialism in most areas, although more in military and foreign aid than is normal. History has shown us disaster and violence whenever an economy moves to too much capitalism or too much socialism or too large or small of communist cells. The Libertarian party in the US, would like to greatly reduce socialism by stopping most of it performed by the government. This is indeed extreme, and would probably be disastrous. The point I hope you see from this, however, is that capitalism and communism always co-exist and are not opposites, although increasing the size of communist cells decreases the number of capitalist interactions, it does not decrease the amount of goods traded, except in making them more efficient.
It is appropriate to distinguish power as in authority of law from power as in brute strength of arms.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
Do I think global warming is an issue? Yes, I do. Do I think humans have had a part in it? Yes, I do. Do I think that nature also has a part in it? Yes, I do.
As far as second-hand smoke is concerned, it certainly isn't healthy, especially in closed and poorly ventilated rooms. Do I think businesses (like bars and restaurants) should be forced to disallow smokers? No, I don't. Ultimately I think it should be up to each individual business and customer to decide, and let market forces sort it out. Unfortunately, too many people here in the states are reactionary, emotional knee jerkers who couldn't think rationally if their life depended on it (incidentally, many even test this in a variety of ways, most of them end up losing).
However, I don't think it is secondhand smoke that is killing us - it is our industrialized environment that is doing the job. The number of chemicals, residual and otherwise, in our environment from industrialization (and I am including transportation in this lot, too), is absolutely staggering. I recently heard about an article a journalist wrote for National Geographic in which he had a large blood test done for something like 300+ possible chemicals from the environment, many of them cancer causing agents or worse. Of those, he tested positive for something like over half. One test he had was on mercury levels - he fasted, had the test done, then "fish gorged" on a meal composed of halibut and swordfish, then had the test redone - the levels were really insane after that. He was also fairly sure that some of the longer-lived chemicals in his system (PCBs, bromides, etc) were partially the result of a dump he played near as a kid, which leached into the river that ran by his house, upstream of the water INTAKE for the town! One large substance amount he tested for with fairly high levels was a common chemical used for fire retardents in furniture and clothing (among other items). Who knows what they might find out about that one in the future, but it likely won't be good for you.
We are all living in a larger version of the "poorly ventilated room", pumping "secondhand smoke" (particulates, gases, heavy metals, mercury, PCBs, and a lot of other noxious crap) into our environment. Most of us don't see this, or when we do, we don't really SEE it (think about what may be in the laundry detergent, dish soap, or other common chemicals you use). I am not saying all of this is necessarily bad for the environment (much of it is benign overall) - but then again it wasn't that long ago that people were "frolicking" through dust clouds of DDT being sprayed in neighborhoods.
Secondhand smoke from tobacco is the least of my concerns. I am more concerned about how much my small truck (and the other cars around me) are slowly killing me and everyone else around while we sit, waiting for the light to turn green...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I agree that Libertarian economic policies do not work in the long term, but not because of an individual's lack of foresight. They don't work because without any socialism, wage disparity and wealth consolidation rise dramatically until there is no middle class.
There are a variety of problems with Libertarianism. That is another one that I have pointed out in previous discussions on the subject. I could probably list several others if I wanted to take the time, but since this was not intended to be an academic discussion of the pros and cons of Libertarianism, I felt that one off-hand problem was sufficient.
I think what you are missing is that socialism, communism, and capitalism are elements of the economy, while Republican, Democrat, and Libertarian are political parties. This does not mean there cannot be a "socialist" party, "communist" party or a "capitalist" party, but those are independent of their meanings within the economy.
Actually, I'm not missing that at all. My entire point was that not all Democrats are what, in the US at least, would define themselves as Socialists. You're certainly correct that in much of the world, the term socialism may have a different meaning (as does libertarian for that matter), but since we are speaking about Democrats, which is a US political party, I felt it was reasonable to define my terms bsed on their US contexts, without regard to their meanings in other conutries. In the US, "Socialists" are usually something like these guys, so I'm, sure you can understand why I want to clarify that not everyone on the far left of the Democratic party are socialists. As I pointed out (from the beginning actually), I do support some socialist ideas, but that does not make me a socialist in the popular usage of the word.
I think the problem is that you are using the term socialism in an academic context, I'm using the popular definition. Neither of our definitions is wrong, but they are right in different ways. If you ask the average Republican if they are a socialist, they would deny it with some fervor, but they probably do support a goverment paid police force. Your definition is technically correct, but very wrong in the popular sense. My definition is exactly the opposite. Since I wasn't attempting to make an academic argument, I didn't see the point in trying to stay away from the popular usage.
I think you're mistaken in thinking communism and capitalism are polar opposites. In truth, socialism is closer to an opposite to capitalism, than communism is. As for economic systems, all working economic systems are a bunch of individuals and/or communist cells competing in a capitalist economy, while everyone contributes some to socialist programs. In the US most communist cells are family units or extended families, with a few communes and monasteries. These compete in a capitalist economy, while taxes are collected by the central government on spent on socialist programs like public schools, military, police, roads, etc.
You're probably correct. Your definition seems reasonable, and as I pointed out, I am not an economist or academic. Nonetheless, you're completely missing the point. I am not arguing the relative merits of any economic system, or really even trying to define any of them. This entire thread started when someone objected to the fact you defined Libertarianism as extreme and I pointed out that true unfettered capitalism is pretty much on the extreme end of the economic spectrum. That was the entire point of my post, everything else was just supporting material. You're right, it might have been somewhat inaccurate, but it doesn't invalidate my point unless you are now saying that you were wrong in the beginning.
Historically (and I believe still outside the US), libertarianism was primarily defined by their views on civil liberties. Since about the 60's or so (I believe, it might have started earlier), the movement started to be taken over by people whose views were much more focused on property rights then on personal liberties. Modern libertarianism, as defined by the Libertarian party is pretty fundamentally tied to the notion of free market capitalism. Certainly there are some people with somewhat divergent views on the matter, but if you're voting for a Libertarian candidate, you can be pretty confident that they are a free market capitalist, so read their platform carefully.
Libertarians tend to be not quite as far out as Objectivists, but the differences are usually pretty small from what I've been able to pick up. Maybe it's just been bad luck, but I've yet to meet someone who considered themselves an Objectivist who seemed to have much of a connection with Reality. They tend to be of the view that if Ayn Rand said it, it's true, no matter how absurd the notion. Most Libertarians have at least some ability to think independently still.
(To be fair, while I have significant problems with the economic ideas of modern Libertarian party, I do agree with their views on many other issues. They're certainly a better option then the modern republican party.)
Well, certainly there's no economic system that offers perfect information. I'm just not convinced that other economic systems lose their benefits in the same way as a libertarian one. If Joe Stalin tells the people they must all buy Kommunist Kabbages, then it makes little difference whether they know of the existence of Capitalist Cabbages or not, since Uncle Joe will not permit them to be sold.
[taking your points slightly out of order ...]
There's two points there to consider. First of all, I believe the profit imperative means that it's entirely possible for a capitalist monopoly to be considerably worse than communism. A communist economy has a vested interest in building things to last, for example, so we don't get the phenomena of made-to-break goods. The quality of goods may be lower than in a healthy free market, but could end up much higher than those in a corrupt market with captive communications. That's not to say that communism is good, or that libertarianism is bad (bearing in mind your apples-to-apples point) just that it's not safe to assume that a libertarian model is at worst as good as communism.
The second point is that, if a cartel can gain broad based control of the media, then they are in a position to dictate arbitrary monopolies. That potato cartel, if they can control information to that extent, can probably control information about apples, cheese and personal video recorders. This opens new avenues of profit - investing in one brand of cheese, say, and suppressing information about competitors. And since the cartel have already demonstrated a willingness to abuse their control of information, we must suppose that sooner or later they will attempt to control information about all every product they can.
That's true, if you accept the basic assumptions upon which the model founded. The trouble is that the same is true of any economic system. You can't improve upon Communism if you assume that everyone will be happy to share equally, for instance. You can't improve upon Monarchy if you assume that the King rules by Divine Right and that anything he does is therefore for the best. If you accept the underlying assumptions, the model always works. So what we're doing here is questioning some of the assumptions of libertarianism.
My main objection to libertarianism lies not in the theory, but in the way it seems to have been hijacked by the corporate right, so that we get deregulation for large corporations, and lots of tough new laws protecting corporate interests at the expense of private citizens. It's not a theoretical objection but a complaint with the implementation. And in that respect the comparison with communism (apples to apples) seems apt. Communism - share and share alike - seems an unarguably fair and equitable way to organise a society. The main strike against communism is that it seems not to work in practice. And I think it's about time we began to quest
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
I think the problem is that you are using the term socialism in an academic context, I'm using the popular definition.
I've given you my definitions of the term "socialism." In most places in the world in means people who support the socialist policy in question. In the US politics it means "bad" in an undefined way. I don't think claiming "socailist" means you are a member of or agree with the Socailist Freedom party in the US any more than being a member of the Republican party means you are in favor of republics.
Please tell, me what is the common definition of "socialist" in US political discussions, according to your observations.
Talk about picking and choosing yr epochs. 1998 was the hottest year on record. Two things are frightening:
1. There has not been a significant cooling trend since then src. Ow. No downward movement since the hottest year on record.
2. Not only you, but people working for fairly mainstream publications cite this as some kind of refutation.
"I've been tracking the temperature since the middle of July and have noticed a significant cooling trend. What's up with that? This issue is so politicized no one can tell what the facts are!"
lol.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Let me try to explain myself in a different way. There are at least a half dozen or so groups in the US who are the [blank] Socialist Party (Freedom Socialist Party, Workers Socialist Party...). My politics, and that of most other Democrats-- even those of us on the far left-- don't line up with those groups. Even while you acknowledge it, you are trying to ignore the fact that the term Socialist-- in a US political context-- has a ton of baggage attached to it.
You are correct that using your definition, I am a socialist. But your definition is functionally useless since virtually every other American is as well. Practically speaking, not everyone who supports some element or degree of socialism is a "socialist". I'm not quite sure exactly where you should draw the dividing line, but considering the people who currently use the term to describe their views, you draw it somewhere pretty far away from me.
Scientists are too fallible. I, for one, welcome our new policy-setting lobbyist overlords!
But could you provide an example of those "leftist organizations" doing "the same"? I'm seeing a lot of Vast Left-Wing Science-Debasing Conspiracies being handwaved into existence in the comment threads here, in response to documented and admitted evidence of Philip Morris and ExxonMobil doing the same. It makes for a cute rhetorical flourish, but it's flawed in that it's bullshit.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
It's way easier to respond to a documented noise machine with a clear profit motive and admitted money trail by waving into existence a morally equivalent noise machine for its opposition than it is to respond with any evidence, isn't it?
But maybe I'm wrong---maybe there's an analogous money trail of think tanks designed to subvert the scientific process which draw their paychecks from "eurosocialist elite coffers". If so, I'm sure you'll be kind enough to point me to it.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I believe I've heard an interview with a director with the same last name, and it was pronounced "FOO-kwah".
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
The first two rants I read contained the canard of "how can scientists tell us about the climate in twenty years if they can't tell us if it'll rain next week?". This does not inspire confidence in him.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
If you're hiring PR men to subvert the scientific process, it's a fair sign that you can't win on science alone.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Commies? Shit, that takes me back. But this is a simple example of argument by association, and it fails to make your point.
Example: if NAMBLA comes out in favor of net neutrality, that doesn't make net neutrality a bad idea. If Hitler was a vegetarian, that doesn't make vegetarianism a bad idea. Bin Laden opposed the invasion of Iraq; that doesn't make the invasion of Iraq a bad idea. (Of course, it doesn't make it a good idea, either.)
Now, you might be thinking that the original article's premise is the same sort of argument, but it's not. The argument by association would be "Philip Morris opposes anthropogenic global warming theory; therefore anthropogenic global warming theory is valid". This is not the argument that is made. The argument is "Philip Morris funds lies and deception, therefore (a) they're kinda evil, and (b) said flim-flam doesn't prove their point---they should make their point through science and evidence, or not at all". Savvy?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
There are two different discussions here, which overlap. There's the question of what the science says; that is, the result of the scientific process. Philip Morris doesn't affect this. However, the campaign of disinformation affects public opinion and public policy (which is why you see people saying "if they can't predict the weather next week, they sure can't predict the climate in twenty years!").
Philip Morris isn't making legitimate scientific claims. They're being as intentionally obtuse as ID supporters, attempting to subvert and bypass the process by which science informs (but does not dictate) public opinion and public policy. When I speak of winning, I speak of winning the public policy debate. In this case, Philip Morris is cheating.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Oh, I agree that science shouldn't dictate public policy. My favorite historical example is the moon landing. Kennedy asked his science advisor if they could justify the Apollo program on scientific grounds, and he said it wasn't a cost-effective way of conducting science, and that it wouldn't be particularly scientifically meaningful. Kennedy went ahead with the Apollo program, but he didn't try to use science as a figleaf for it.
As for the generalized special-interests problem; yes, it's a problem, but this was specifically about a noise machine constructed to destroy the public's faith in one of the basic institutions of Western civilization. So I don't think they're exactly the moral equivalent of the ACLU.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
OK, so your counter argument that libertarianism can work is to list some groups who tried it for a while but usually quickly got wiped out by groups who didn't follow anarchist philosophy? And the anarchist leader of one of your examples quickly became corrupted by the ideals of the communists and republicans? Please re-read what you wrote. You've just proved my point that libertarianism is at best a metastable state that cannot compete with organized governments in the long run for exactly the reasons I stated.
Authority has had a few thousand years to tell you that you can't escape it. That makes it pretty easy to believe it, but it doesn't make it true.
Authority has had a few thousand years to tell you that you can't escape it because it's kicked the ass of everyone who thought otherwise. The many who are willing to work together under an individual (or a small group of individuals) will always be more powerful militarily than the few, even though individuals can wield much more power than a century or two ago. Authority can't force you to work for them, but it can kill you and give your possessions to someone else willing to kowtow to it; that's how it gets followers. Until everybody in your society has tactical nukes at their disposal, and is sane and rational enough not to use them except under extreme duress, Authority will continue kick your ass.
At 350 million Merkins, let alone 6 billion humans, that's a demand for lot of fissionables that's really going to pump up the price given the relatively limited and diminishing supply. And most people don't have enough room for a 25 meter long cruise missile in an 800 sq. foot apartment, let alone a grass hut. So yeah, I think Libertarianism is an unrealistic utopia and nothing in your post does anything to change my mind.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire