Isn't it all hydrocarbons anyways? Why not just burn it in coal power plants?
That's basically what the Dutch do, and they're the golden child of recycling. They found that burning plastic is more economical than recycling it. They also recycle all sorts of metals, but after incineration.
Depends on where you dig from. I always heard that one as a kid, especially when digging a deep hole in the backyard. However, if you go from NY through the center of the earth to the other side, you wind up in the Indian Ocean not far from the southwest corner of Australia.
Yes, people need to "get out of their way" so they can find their own way to make money, but that requires a few basics from society: a half-decent not totally corrupt government, an economy not entirely controlled by monopolistic rentiers, crime that isn't the dominant economic sector, some level of public health (e.g. screens on the outhouse), and some basic education and communication with other places. An infrastructure that allows reasonable transport of people and goods helps too.
Despite what we now see as the primitive living conditions of your grandparents, those are things that they and their descendants had.
Couldn't they be altruistic and at the same time motivated by profit?
By the definition of altruism, no. They could however be motivated by profit and have a beneficial effect. That's why most of us accept capitalism for most things. The important question here is not whether they're being altruistic, but what (if any) beneficial effect it will have.
Only by idiot first-worlders with a death wish. You can live for decades without an internet connection; Three days to a week without water, and you're dead.
Give the guy a break. He probably meant that if they have no clean water, they should drink Starbucks instead.
You get cholera from a contaminated water supply. You can get some nasty parasites and toxins from fish though. It's best to drink clean water and avoid fish with two heads.
P.S. Although I doubt you intended to, you're using the same assumptions that economists use when advocating comparative advantage and the wonders of free trade.
Since both raw materials and work are finite how can Capitalism be anything other than a zero sum?
That's true if you assume that technology and methods of organization can't be improved. Somehow though, with the same availability of raw materials (actually far less per capita) and the same amount of potential work per capita, we have a higher standard of living than they did in the Stone Age, or for that matter the first half of the 20th century.
It's a common fallacy that anything a corporation does that is profitable is necessarily evil.
You're attacking a straw man. Nobody said this was evil, or that it would be harmful to the worlds poor. At most they said it won't help the poor, and the claim that it will is a misleading way to describe market expansion.
We have all been hungry off and on, we have all been sick off and on, and we can picture more extreme versions.
No, I don't think we really picture more extreme versions. I've never gone more than a day without eating, have you? Hungry is a long way from starving, or being chronically malnourished, or worrying that you will go hungry if the next harvest fails. Unless you have cancer, sick probably means a bad flu. You'll get better. Untreated malaria or hookworm are different - they're chronically debilitating diseases that often start young and return periodically. They often keep people from working, so they can't plant or harvest crops, or hold a regular job.
Starving kills, sickness kills, but so does ignorance.
Often the problem isn't disseminating information, but getting people to believe it and use it. I read a good article a while back (sorry, I've lost the link) about teaching African farmers (in Zambia?) better techniques, like crop rotation, and planting crops other than corn, so they'll get balanced nutrition. It can take years to get people who are living harvest to harvest to believe that they'll be better off leaving some fields fallow for a season. The local farmer's conservatism is understandable when a bad harvest may mean starvation, and not just a temporary loss of income. One way that seems to work is to get one farmer to try it, and when his neighbors see he's doing well, they'll try it too.
As much as I hate to admit it, for once Bill Gates is right. People who lack enough decent food or sanitation, and suffer from chronic diseases and lack of even the most rudimentary health care, have things they need more than the Internet.
different energies of radiation have different damage potential
The idea of the Sievert unit is that it's weighted according to damage to human health (the unweighted unit is a Gray). You're right about the internal/external thing though.
On the bright side, you can buy Fukushima real estate very cheap these days. Uh, what's the half-life of this stuff? Gotta do a present/future value calculation on that real estate investment.
Better check your arithmetic. It's giving off 100 mSv/hr = 876 Sv/yr (about 175x the fatal dose). If you flew in an airliner 24x7 you'd get 24 mSv/yr (a dose 36,500x smaller).
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Goats are not that dumb - people are.
In the 21st century, there's no excuse for significant dioxin emissions from incinerators:
In 2005, The Ministry of the Environment of Germany, where there were 66 incinerators at that time, estimated that "...whereas in 1990 one third of all dioxin emissions in Germany came from incineration plants, for the year 2000 the figure was less than 1%. Chimneys and tiled stoves in private households alone discharge approximately 20 times more dioxin into the environment than incineration plants."
It's nice to know that there is something that the fictional John Galt would have gotten right.
Isn't it all hydrocarbons anyways? Why not just burn it in coal power plants?
That's basically what the Dutch do, and they're the golden child of recycling. They found that burning plastic is more economical than recycling it. They also recycle all sorts of metals, but after incineration.
http://www.triplepundit.com/2010/06/a-tour-of-amsterdam%E2%80%99s-waste-to-energy-plant/
I've often wondered as I tossed soda bottles in the bin just how they deal with getting the soda residue out of each bottle.
Shred it first.
Depends on where you dig from. I always heard that one as a kid, especially when digging a deep hole in the backyard. However, if you go from NY through the center of the earth to the other side, you wind up in the Indian Ocean not far from the southwest corner of Australia.
Because it is demonstrably false
The way to deal with a post that is demonstrably false is to post a rebuttal that demonstrates the original post is false.
Yes, people need to "get out of their way" so they can find their own way to make money, but that requires a few basics from society: a half-decent not totally corrupt government, an economy not entirely controlled by monopolistic rentiers, crime that isn't the dominant economic sector, some level of public health (e.g. screens on the outhouse), and some basic education and communication with other places. An infrastructure that allows reasonable transport of people and goods helps too.
Despite what we now see as the primitive living conditions of your grandparents, those are things that they and their descendants had.
Couldn't they be altruistic and at the same time motivated by profit?
By the definition of altruism, no. They could however be motivated by profit and have a beneficial effect. That's why most of us accept capitalism for most things. The important question here is not whether they're being altruistic, but what (if any) beneficial effect it will have.
Only by idiot first-worlders with a death wish. You can live for decades without an internet connection; Three days to a week without water, and you're dead.
Give the guy a break. He probably meant that if they have no clean water, they should drink Starbucks instead.
You get cholera from a contaminated water supply. You can get some nasty parasites and toxins from fish though. It's best to drink clean water and avoid fish with two heads.
P.S. Although I doubt you intended to, you're using the same assumptions that economists use when advocating comparative advantage and the wonders of free trade.
Since both raw materials and work are finite how can Capitalism be anything other than a zero sum?
That's true if you assume that technology and methods of organization can't be improved. Somehow though, with the same availability of raw materials (actually far less per capita) and the same amount of potential work per capita, we have a higher standard of living than they did in the Stone Age, or for that matter the first half of the 20th century.
It's a common fallacy that anything a corporation does that is profitable is necessarily evil.
You're attacking a straw man. Nobody said this was evil, or that it would be harmful to the worlds poor. At most they said it won't help the poor, and the claim that it will is a misleading way to describe market expansion.
Can you cite any information or articles about that? Seriously, I have an open mind on this issue.
We have all been hungry off and on, we have all been sick off and on, and we can picture more extreme versions.
No, I don't think we really picture more extreme versions. I've never gone more than a day without eating, have you? Hungry is a long way from starving, or being chronically malnourished, or worrying that you will go hungry if the next harvest fails. Unless you have cancer, sick probably means a bad flu. You'll get better. Untreated malaria or hookworm are different - they're chronically debilitating diseases that often start young and return periodically. They often keep people from working, so they can't plant or harvest crops, or hold a regular job.
Starving kills, sickness kills, but so does ignorance.
Often the problem isn't disseminating information, but getting people to believe it and use it. I read a good article a while back (sorry, I've lost the link) about teaching African farmers (in Zambia?) better techniques, like crop rotation, and planting crops other than corn, so they'll get balanced nutrition. It can take years to get people who are living harvest to harvest to believe that they'll be better off leaving some fields fallow for a season. The local farmer's conservatism is understandable when a bad harvest may mean starvation, and not just a temporary loss of income. One way that seems to work is to get one farmer to try it, and when his neighbors see he's doing well, they'll try it too.
Can you give some specifics of that? Otherwise, quite frankly, it's more like a rant than an argument.
Why was this modded flamebait? It's an opinion. Whether I or any mods agree w/ it is irrelevant.
As much as I hate to admit it, for once Bill Gates is right. People who lack enough decent food or sanitation, and suffer from chronic diseases and lack of even the most rudimentary health care, have things they need more than the Internet.
I ain't going near it, how about you?
different energies of radiation have different damage potential
The idea of the Sievert unit is that it's weighted according to damage to human health (the unweighted unit is a Gray). You're right about the internal/external thing though.
I'm pretty tolerant of my neighbors, but 100 mSv/hr in the neighborhood would definitely be a deal breaker.
On the bright side, you can buy Fukushima real estate very cheap these days. Uh, what's the half-life of this stuff? Gotta do a present/future value calculation on that real estate investment.
Better check your arithmetic. It's giving off 100 mSv/hr = 876 Sv/yr (about 175x the fatal dose). If you flew in an airliner 24x7 you'd get 24 mSv/yr (a dose 36,500x smaller).
You're all trying to calculate EROEI. It's already been done. It's 6.8 for photovoltaics.