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Scientists Warn the UN of Capitalism's Imminent Demise (vice.com)
Capitalism as we know it is over, an anonymous reader writes. So suggests a new report commissioned by a group of scientists appointed by the UN Secretary-General. From a report: The main reason? We're transitioning rapidly to a radically different global economy, due to our increasingly unsustainable exploitation of the planet's environmental resources. Climate change and species extinctions are accelerating even as societies are experiencing rising inequality, unemployment, slow economic growth, rising debt levels, and impotent governments. Contrary to the way policymakers usually think about these problems, the new report says that these are not really separate crises at all. Rather, these crises are part of the same fundamental transition to a new era characterized by inefficient fossil fuel production and the escalating costs of climate change. Conventional capitalist economic thinking can no longer explain, predict, or solve the workings of the global economy in this new age, the paper says [PDF].
Left / Right - same shit different day of the week. Each just want different people in chains.
Can someone tell me which hypothesis they tested and what data set they used to draw these conclusions.
This is more like fortune telling the 'science'. Hypothesis, experiment, data , conclusion.
This is a lot of why science gets a bad reputation in some circles. These 'scientists' are speaking far beyond what their data and experiments can prove and instead are pushing the hypothesis as if it were true.
That's not to say they 'aren't' right, just that at some point the fact that a scientist says something unscientific doesn't make it any more 'right' then if an English professor does the same.
Also, to take note of is 'what kind of scientist' the article went down before I could read this maybe someone else will have more luck, by sociologist and economists psychologist are not strictly 'scientist' they are involved is 'soft sciences' are about halfway between a real science and pure philosophy. If you study any of them you quickly find out that they play be a whole set of different 'rules' than physicist or engineers, but they like to claim their conclusions have just as much force, which they cannot because their evidence is always considerably less certain.
I'd just like to point out that what we have in the US isn't capitalism. It's much closer to corporatism. In true capitalism, the government is present only to enforce contract law. In our current system, government is deeply entangled in virtually every aspect of business. Sorry, not capitalism.
Socialists tried "something else" many times over and hurt people to the tune of over 100 million dead.
That's a lot less than capitalism has killed at this point if we're going on made up numbers.
First off, nuclear power is the single largest source of energy that we have. That is a fact. And the byproducts are minor to take care of.
Did you not read the paper? The problem with AE as well as fossil fuels today, is that for the energy put in, does not have a great ROI. IOW, back in the late 1800s, pop in a pipe in the wrong place about 10' in the ground and you got massive amounts of oil. Now, we have to go down 1000x further, pump large amounts of water and other elements into the ground to open up cracks and then pump a relatively small amount of nat gas/oil. Wind/Solar have smilar issues. Geo-thermal is actually a good one depending on locations. But, far too many ppl are fighting it.
As to having a deregulated nuke power plant, where did you come up with that?????? That is a LOONEY idea. Regs have not hurt Nukes. Lawsuits have hurt Nukes. And staying with 3rd gen reactors for 40 years is just plain STUPID. New 4th gen SMRs are the only way to go.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
From 0 to 18000 kronor you have 0 tax. Sure 18000 kronor is not much (2000 dollar yearly!) but then up to 460K kronor, that is 50K dollar yearly the tax rate is only about 30%. So far off your 76%. In fact only the top marginal tax have 76% and ONLY if you count the VAT (the top tax is 57% not 76% and if you count 25% from VAT then only then you come near 70% at most and that is assuming you think all tax goes to the same entity the state, which is untrue as about 20% of that is municipality). So I would qualify your claim as not only untrue, but if the people having less than 70K$ per year have any brain they will vote to continue the system.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org